The Long Way Home
by jackal1973
Summary: Sequel to This Broken Road (Alternate S4-S7). "Doc," he humorlessly smiled, "she did it though, knowing she was nothing but a glorified nanny to that boy because she's loyal."
1. Ain't No Son of Mine

" _We do the time,_ " he'd silently ground out to himself as the steel prison doors buzzed closed behind Jax as he'd squinted into the blinding sunlight facing down his newfound freedom. " _That's what we do_."

Jax had damn sure done his.

Now, the V.P. of SAMCRO was all too ready to head home but they'd ridden the slower moving roads back from Stockton.

After well over a year inside, Jax hadn't really cared which route they rode as long as it took them far away from that overly oppressive hellhole. He was just relieved to finally be released from the harsh concrete walls and cold metal bars that had nearly entombed him within the stale confines of the correctional facility forever thanks to the liquid vengeance that viciously ran through the Russians' veins right down to the sharp edge of the shiv they'd ruthlessly buried inside him. However, with each passing mile of rumbling freedom they rolled over, the somber despair that had ridden bitch behind him through his hard stint in prison seemed to invite hopeful anticipation to take an eager turn warming his back instead. The lighter feeling was a welcome change until they'd passed the startling deforestation that had brutally raped the familiar land where Oswald's machines now savagely stripped part of Charming's formerly pristine and untouched woods bare as a newborn's backside.

In that instant, it became all too apparent that the home-fires wouldn't ever be quite the same again no matter what the Sons did. As if he really needed another glaring reminder of that painful truth, Jax silently cursed the housing development's jaunty billboard before begrudgingly moving on with grim resolution toward the clubhouse. Unfortunately, their progress was soon forestalled again by another unwanted change- a county fortified dick who needed to show everyone just how big his black nightstick was with grand standing blockades right in the fucking center of town- making it brashly apparent to everyone that there was even less of a veneer of illicit charm or a clever ruse of deceit covering his Club's actions.

Fuck.

He got it.

He _really_ did.

But, he'd been so fucking over it that ' _been there; done that_ ' wouldn't even begin to cover it because Jax had been mentally finished with the altercation before it had even jumped off to begin with.

Impatiently, he wanted to be past all of the posturing bullshit and back on the road headed towards the first painfully awkward steps at recouping the tattered remnants of his life. Instead, the biker was forced to listen to some bogus, puffed up, spiel about gang colors and identifying clothing being worn in public. The Federal Government could kiss his white trash ass because they'd yet to prove the Sons were anything other than motorcycle enthusiasts even with their most recent weapons convictions. It was bad enough that he'd temporarily lost his Old Lady; there was no way in hell that Jax was going to prematurely surrender his battered leather to a squeaky clean Q-tip from the San Joaquin Sheriff's department as well so he'd just have to put his head down and shoulder through Roosevelt's jacked up harassment like he had his penitent time in Stockton.

The additional nuisance would roughly chafe his pride at times but Jax really didn't have much of a choice; certainly not if his most deep-seated wish was ever going to come to fruition. He'd spent the last fourteen months trying to decipher a pittance of hope and a worthwhile message from Tara's continued silence and Jax thought he'd finally cracked the elusive code to regaining her heart but that meant he had to keep his nose legally clean as far as the authorities were concerned. He needed to be free of any more charges and without any parole violations hindering his new life plan going forward because his Old Lady might think they were done but Jax _knew_ they were so far from fucking over that he could barely think straight at times but, somehow, he'd remained singularly focused because of the one promise she'd faithfully kept to him.

Even if she'd done it mutely, Tara _had_ remained in Charming.

For him.

And, especially, for his boy.

Despite acting as if they were virtually strangers of no consequence, Tara had dutifully brought Abel over to Stockton for weekly visits even if it had been his best friend who'd actually carried his boy inside the correctional facility to see him. In some ways, it had been pure torture knowing that Tara was so close, just outside the prison walls, but her proximity had mattered little when his woman was so emotionally distant from him and, yet, it would have been so much worse if she hadn't even been there at all.

Since Tara was still angry enough to drive the spiteful stake of her last words in deeper by doting on his son but essentially ignoring his own existence; Jax knew that they still had a shot at reconciliation. Slim, but, _there_. If the Doc had really been through with him, she would have irreversibly severed her connections to his world with such surgical precision there would never be any going back. Instead, his woman had purposefully ensconced herself even deeper within the sheltering love and solid protection of the Sons' extended family.

And, she'd done way more than her fucking part while he'd been away; that much was made abundantly clear.

There'd been little club news that hadn't involved his estranged Old Lady in some manner or another both before and after Gemma had been able to march a free path through Charming and reassume her reign as Queen. Tara had even been instrumental in sliding Lyla out from under the camera's all too revealing eye and into the hard packed drawers of Teller-Morrow's office, a bold move that had satisfied both Op's barely concealed distaste for his future wife's former profession and the Club's more immediate need at the time for capable hands at the garage's front desk.

If an Old Lady could make or break a club; Tara had become a daily testimonial to the truth of that adage while she'd been the glue that helped ensure the Mother Charter's stability while they'd been away. She'd proved that the V.P.'s woman could patch up the holes left by many of their absences around the clubhouse just as well or better than she could mend a stray bullet wound or fix an infant's ailing heart. Yet, it was small consolation to know that Tara was so fully accepted and trusted now that she'd seemingly turned her back on him but it still made Jax inherently proud that the ink of his crow over her steely backbone was wholly merited and truly indelible.

Tara had become SAMCRO in a way that nobody- not even he or his conspicuously tutoring mother- had been able to properly foresee or predict. There'd been a time, when Abel had been missing that he had ruthlessly tried to push Tara away from finding her place at his side for her own protection but those foolhardy days had past. Now Jax was more than ready to embrace Tara in every part of his world if his stubborn woman would only let him and, more importantly, he was willing to carve out a new niche for himself in hers as well.

Of course, that was assuming he survived whatever less than ideal homecoming Tara had planned for him.

He wasn't stupid; his woman had always known how to make him bleed long before she'd ever learned to wield the precision tip of a scalpel.

Whether it was another dose of the soul numbing cold shoulder she'd ruthlessly doled out from her own hospital bed the last time they'd talked or just the sharp incision of her piercing tongue; it wouldn't matter. Jax would willingly take a lethal dose of her retribution just to actually see her in person again after all of this time. After today, he wouldn't have to settle for only envisioning her in his vividly haunting memories or just staring at her within the smooth, flat lines of his cherished photograph of her. That solo picture of his long absent woman that had become extremely well-handled after Gemma had all too knowingly slipped it into his achingly greedy fingers on his mother's first visit to Stockton off of house arrest to help keep him even on the inside. Yes, soon, Tara would be a firmly defiant woman within his desperately yearning grasp again.

 _Finally_.

At least, he'd be able to land the heady, raking feel of his heated gaze upon her tender flesh if nothing else. Fourteen months of banked anticipation coiled heavily around his spine straight down to his needy balls as they pulled into the Teller-Morrow lot and rolled their bikes back into line amid the whoops, hollers, and cheers of eager well wishers. The happy greetings were a nice sentiment but the only homecoming that truly mattered to him was embodied within a certain doctor's feminine charms. As he trudged across the concrete pad with his leather clad brothers, Jax knew that he should be falling into her loving embrace, being welcomed back into the circle of his eager, young family, and holding Tara close as she nestled his second son in her maternal embrace but, instead, his only living child scampered toward him in a solitary toddler procession. _Alone_. There was no brunette surgeon trailing him as a diligent maternal shadow in sight anywhere.

Just a smattering of useless, easy, and wholly unwanted pussy.

Hell. Jax knew that he was to blame for the broken road he'd laid between them, that he'd be in for a bumpy stretch toward reconciliation but, damn, it hadn't kept his beleaguered heart from hoping for just an inkling of even the teeniest nod of recognition from her today.

 _Jesus_.

As he scooped up his boy in a warm, exuberant hug, Jax immaturely brooded. He'd have bargained with the hounds of hell for Tara to even blatantly ignore him as she stomped off across the lot to leave in a perfectly timed departure to his arrival just like she would have done back in the day before she'd ever left Charming. Maybe, even, have her trying to flaunt some slickly heeled medical hotshot waiting on her or some such bullshit just to rile his temper.

But there was just _nothing_ which was far worse than the grueling radio silence they'd been maintaining the last fourteen months.

He bit down on the insides of his lips as Jax reminded himself; he could only point the deadly trigger of blame at the bullseye of stupidity that stared back at him in the mirror every day as he pulled Abel even tighter to a chest filled with a raging sea of regret.

* * *

Gemma saw her boy's eyes dart around surreptitiously before settling once again on the toe headed tyke charging at him.

The biking maven couldn't help but smile with gratitude as she watched her son and grandson snuggle and bond free of the fetters and restraints formerly put upon them by the state at Stockton for the first time in fourteen months. Thankfully, he'd made it through alive, if not completely whole, without Tara.

The guys had all thought that Gemma had been pissed after finding out about Clay nailing that little Cherry tart from Nevada when she wouldn't let him bail her out of jail but they hadn't seen a grudge the likes that Tara could carry. Op and Miles had kept the worst little detail of Tara's ire under wraps so far but she already knew how much the doctor's contrary nature was going to hurt her boy when he finally figured it out. It would be harder for Gemma to watch Jax face this additional pain and not act to protect him if she didn't think the little slut deserved it to some extent especially after the _almost_ fucking his own half-sister incident. His continually wayward dick had left Tara unprotected while they'd been in Ireland trying to recover one grandson and it had cost them all the other one under the most tragic of circumstances.

As she registered Jax's lips still pursed in remorse, trying to bite down on his own bitter pain, Gemma relented a bit, "She's tending to Nate."

Jackson's gaze locked on hers desperate for any excuse for his woman's absence other than the obvious as Gemma further explained, "Since I still can't leave the state yet Tara had to go to Oregon for me but she did real good taking care of Abel."

"Yeah, I know," Jax distastefully accepted the unintended but still harsh reminder of his currently solo reality, a state her son so obviously needed to be only temporary, as he roughly grimaced, "she did great with _him_."

"Yeah, baby, and you're home now," she affirmed with maternal pride that overlaid a finality of understanding between them. "You'll find your way back to her."

"Thanks, Mom," the bolstered smile that suddenly emerged from her son's temporarily shaken but renewed confidence was enough to remind Gemma of the treacherous route they were all going to have to unwittingly navigate going forward.

Jax didn't know it yet but while Tara had remained under his roof to care for Abel; she hadn't set foot inside their bedroom since she'd been taken by that Calavaras scum. The burn of that self-barring move certainly sent a message all on it's own; one her son would not like if and when he realized it. Trying to mitigate that damage and not wanting to write out another dose of the good doctor's temper in advance of his homecoming, Gemma had cleaned Jax's room up herself in preparation of his arrival and gotten things ready for his release while Tara had been coordinating her father's latest battery of tests and results with the nursing home.

It was fortuitous that she had too because that meddling Irish gash had tried to reach across the Atlantic and ruin everything once again by having J.T. speak from the grave through those damn traitorous love letters she'd shoved in Jax's unpacked rucksack. She was pretty sure that Tara hadn't read them but she'd ruthlessly keep that little whisper of doubt and unease that chilled her spine to herself; Gemma wouldn't even allow herself to think otherwise.

For to do so would just hurt them all in the end; for once, Gemma wouldn't go burning her world down to nothing but bloody lifeless cinders without real provocation first. She loved Tara too much for that but, mostly, she loved her boy even more.

And, to hurt Tara simply destroyed Jax.

She couldn't do it; he was still suffering far too much from her last attack. Those wounds weren't even close to healed yet.

Just then Gemma saw the flash of the snazzy blue paint of the smart new SUV Tara had purchased whizz by unnoticed by her boys but not so by another brother who'd been lingering on the outskirts, watching, just waiting for his chance for a while now. Bracing, she wondered just how long it would take Jax to pick up on all the subtle and not so subtle changes surrounding the dark haired beauty who'd owned his heart since before her boy had even become a man.

Maternal instinct never died. Even if he deserved the damage; Gemma would never allow Jax to actually suffer it.

With a resigned sigh, she moved to head off the latest shit storm before her future daughter-in-law could unintentionally kick it up as Tara steam rolled forward in her simple but still slightly edgy way.

* * *

There was denim, cotton, and lace. An innocent camisole and simple jeans and, then, there was the stunning visual artifice of Tara's seemingly thrown together ensemble.

Soft, supple, broken in just right and stretched tight over the all too feminine curves that still beckoned to Jax like a siren's song. Calling to him with every sultry note of her movement; the lilting strains of her smooth pale form threatened to drown him with the suffocating need of his own body's tormenting want as waves of desire immediately crashed over him as Tara slowly settled her sunglasses atop her head. The frames tossed the loose, chocolate layers away from her face in the same manner his calloused hands would have if his fingers were roughly nestled within those curls to slowly drag her toward him as he slipped a warm, wet, and all too thoroughly delicious welcome between his tongue and hers.

He could almost taste her sweetness; his body overly eager to reacquaint itself with all things Tara as he surged forward to join her and Gemma as they talked.

It was harder to tell who was more anxious to have Tara's attention now; him or his son, as Abel nearly leapt from his arms into her surprised embrace. The brilliant smile that dawned across her face nearly made him jealous of his own fucking kid for a moment as she tickled the little monster who'd launched himself into Tara's arms making them both softly giggle with such a bond of overt devotion between them that it nearly left him speechless.

But not quite.

He just couldn't help it.

Jax had to get her attention somehow as he broke into their intimate moment of sunny revery, "Tara, I know you didn't need to help me but, Babe, thank you."

Her whole body stiffened at his words; her gaze slowly shifting and narrowing in that way that made Jax feel like she was abruptly seeing him as less than a man, a sudden enemy, wary prey even, something that either needed to be furiously run from or purposefully hunted down and killed with no quarter all while his son sat happily perched on her rounded hip oblivious to the tension mounting between his two favorite adults.

 _What the hell had he just done?_

Tara was going to eviscerate him; her deadly look clearly said it all. She'd just mentally green-lit his ass.

In a deceptively even tone after squeezing Abel even tighter to her, Tara stood her ground and stonily offered, "Glad you made it through your time, Jax. Everyone was worried after the pay phone incident."

"Yeah," he acknowledged uncertainly. He wanted to remind his woman that she'd been part of that concerned group but Jax didn't think he could handle her blunt deflection of her specific concern right now in front of everyone even if he already knew that she'd called the infirmary for updates on his condition every hour. Instead, Jax took another bold step into her space, shamelessly taking advantage of Abel's proximity to get close to her again as he asked, "See you at the wedding later?"

Currents of need sparked over his body like lightning strikes in a sudden summer storm as their skin brushed for the first time in way too damn long when he grabbed hold of Abel's wiggling form, her unexpected gasp was the only recognition of their heated contact before Tara stepped back from him and recovered, "Yeah, I'll be helping Lila get ready since I'm her maid of honor."

Grabbing her hand before she slipped away from him completely, Jax meaningfully stated, "We should go together."

Ruefully, she tugged her hand free of his claiming hold before Tara killed him without so much as pulling a trigger. "You should really call Ima or Wendy if you're looking for companionship," she flatly whispered with far too much knowledge about his last relations with his ex-wife showing in her eyes as she continued, "I really don't care whose face you see or where your dick lands on a rough night anymore."

As he watched Tara walking away with Kozak trailing eagerly behind her like an obedient puppy nipping at her heels, Jax turned to Gemma with a wary glare of silent demand.

"The sting of that betrayal ain't gonna fade any time soon," his mother balefully replied.

"I know," he muttered rife with self disgust.

"If you really want her back, I'd make sure it doesn't happen again," Gemma cautiously surveyed the bevy of scantily clad Crow Eaters eagerly eyeing him now with heavy meaning, "because she'll know if it does."

Angrily, he spied Kozik close the door on Tara's shiny new cage like his brother was her new keeper. Tara might not understand what that shit meant but there were a few others assembled who were quickly catching more than a few clues as to the latest war about to be waged within the Sons. Kozik might be all happy go lucky chums with Tig again but as the dirty blonde sauntered back toward their group after seeing Tara off there was suddenly a cold wall of disapproval aimed in his direction.

Lovingly, Gemma slipped an arm around her two generations of Teller boys as she lowly informed her son, "Kozik has been respectful so far, clause or no clause, but that's mostly because Tara hasn't seen him as a free dick yet. If she ends up crying on his shoulder now that you're out, it might just be one time too many."

That was a hard lump to swallow.

A _really_ fucking hard one.

Jax had always worried about losing Tara because of his brutal and bloody biking lifestyle _never_ to someone else within that same brotherhood. Nodding his completely unwanted understanding, he gruffly replied, "Thanks, Mom."

"No problem, Baby," his mother softly patted his cheeks before kissing them, "you just put your family back together."

* * *

 _It ain't gonna be business as usual._ There was something in the hard glint of Kozik's normally affable gaze directed from the long end of the table earlier in chapel that had just rubbed Jax completely the wrong way and had made that claim echo down through the heavy pit of his blackening soul.

He'd known it before but that knowledge pumped at an all too molecular level now that he was walking through his unbending front door for the first time. A quick glance around the place revealed that very little had changed; there wasn't a single Harley mirror or Maxim poster out of its original designation. The only things missing were the small feminine touches that Tara had started to grace his house with as she'd slowly made it her home.

As he walked down the hall, Jax almost stopped dead outside the first bedroom.

He hadn't thought that things between them could have gotten much worse until Jax saw a sliver of the cake of retribution Tara was serving up to him on his best friend's wedding day through the small crack in the door. His woman had never been mean or vicious before but she'd learned how to coldly bake a level of brutality into her revenge that should have made even his own mother proud if that iced cruelty wasn't currently directed at him.

"I didn't expect you to be here," Tara nervously explained as she hurriedly shouldered past him with her dress bag in hand. "But the prospects forgot this in the closet when they moved my stuff back to my Dad's place."

"You were using the spare room," he roughly questioned not wanting to believe the truth that was hitting him like a steel pipe to the head.

"Jax, don't," Tara swiftly rebutted. "There's nothing for us to talk about anymore. I was only here taking care of Abel. That's all."

"That's not all you were doing here," he denied with a sincere gruffness that used to have her clutching tighter to him. "You know that, Babe," he pressed only getting more distance from her both physically and emotionally. The chasm between them suddenly looking deeper than the Grand fucking Canyon and taking just as long to wear away her new found resistance to him.

"Things are going to be better," Jax vowed to her retreating back as she made to leave. "Different," he added, "I promise."

Idly, Tara paused at the entryway to coolly study him like she was dissecting a failed experiment. Her features so beautiful but so brittlely hard now as she perused him from head to toe as if she saw his every flaw with magnified detail and horrifying clarity.

Finally, Tara's quiet words leveled excruciating judgement before his woman slipped out his front door, "You're only saying that because you just got out."

She didn't believe him.

And she sure as fuck hadn't forgiven him.

 _Yet_.

But, she would. _Eventually_. Otherwise, why the hell had she stayed in Charming?

* * *

As he stood across the ceremonial platform from Tara with so much more separating them than the few scant steps between them, Jax knew that they should be sharing secret smiles of anticipation for their own nuptials instead of uneasily balancing along the terrifying edge of this lonely precipice.

He remembered the stilted conversation he and Op had had after the Russians had attacked him while he was waiting in line for the payphone when his best friend had told him that Squiggy was now watching Tara and Abel. His brows had quirked in question when he'd mentioned that Kozik had been doing that. Op's grizzly tone had matched his fierce beard when he'd replied, "Trust me, Brother, Miles is the better choice for your family right now."

Yeah, in hindsight, Miles had certainly made a better choice then but, now, _he_ was the best choice. The _only_ option that his woman was gonna get especially in that dress.

She was purely hell on heels in that strapless thing.

Tara had made the devilish need inside him an ironclad deal long ago that would make him burn for only her into perpetuity; Jax was certain that he'd never want another woman with the bone deep desire that pulsed through him with every beat of his aching heart because Tara's name had been inked over every inch of his soul since he was just a teen.

If his Old Lady still knew; she no longer seemed to care that Jax felt that way but he sure as hell did.

 _Jesus_.

This wedding was going to be harder to endure than he'd originally thought because all Jax could do was remember the last time Tara had worn a dress. That scant bit of frothy nothingness had draped over her sweet young body with a wider, fuller, shorter skirt that had floated out behind his bike like party streamers before happily celebrating her graduation night bunched around Tara's waist but this one was too figure hugging to shimmy up her supple legs even if his woman would still allow him such free reign between her absolving thighs again.

And, yet, his cunning imagination was already wickedly devising a multitude of sinful and all too tempting ways where Jax could still have made that happen if Tara wasn't more likely to actually land him in the morgue now than give him a wholly satisfying death within her heavenly walls.

Gritting his teeth against the sudden rush of sexual need that would always swell within him if Tara was near, Jax looked down at his feet to try and regain his flagging composure before the ceremony began only to be thwarted by the seemingly innocent blush of her toes peeking out of Tara's strappy sandals. Jealousy suddenly pumped thick and hard through his veins as he guardedly followed the slender bands of leather along the dainty curve of her arch up toward the sleek turn of her ankle and back down again over what Jax had previously considered his exclusive right to Tara's one purely feminine vice but his private treasure was now prominently on display for any of his fellow bikers to see.

Once it had given him a dominant, all too proprietary air, to realize that he was the only guy in Charming lucky enough to know that Tara's sexy little piggies were always primped and polished to utter perfection under the confining clunk of her heeled boots or the soft but sturdy shield of her hospital sneakers. Yet, now, any of the men present could gluttonously revel in his once private delight and one dirty blonde in particular was avidly eating up every nuance of Tara's party outfit right down to the tiny bit of color splashed across her nearly naked feet.

 _Fuck_.

Jax didn't like it one bit as Kozik's hungry gaze greedily drunk in every heady sip of the finely aged brunette before them right down to _his_ damn pedicured toes in a manner that was not friendly, brotherly, or anything other than distinctly interested man. There was no longer any doubt in Jax's mind that his Brother truly wanted his woman but Kozik was shit out of luck. He'd have to be cold, dead, and rotting in a shallow grave somewhere before Jax would ever let that shit happen and, even then, he'd haunt the fucker until Kozik became butt fucking besties with the reaper right along with him.

As the crass wedding vows were expectantly chanted around them, Jax pinned down the other man with a lethal glower and silently promised, _No way, Brother. No, fucking way. You try that shit with my girl and you won't even be able to seat your Harley._

* * *

She'd danced with his mother. She'd danced with the bride. She'd even danced with Piney.

Wisely, Tara had demurred when Kozik had tried to sidle into the old man's place after they'd taken care of the Russians with a feeble excuse about needing to make sure everything was checked off of Gemma's reception list. Otherwise, they might have one more body to dispose of tonight because Jax was bloody furious.

He'd have liked to cut a slow rug with Tara; to hold her tight against him as they gently swayed in the soft midnight air, hip to hip, and arms all entwined. Instead, he was about to cut a brother as he demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing with Tara?"

"That's none of your business," the Tacoma transfer railed back at him seemingly without fear of the consequences.

"You can't have her, Kozik," his jaw crossly dropped to underscore the vehemence of his words. "It's not gonna work that way."

Smugly, the bastard shot back, "That's not your call anymore V.P.; it's hers."

"Really," Jax instantly challenged. "Is that what you think?"

"Doc's a friend of the Club and not your Old Lady after the way you broke things off with her before Ireland. Even so," the blonde taunted, "you're not on the inside now so when I hook up with her there won't be any confusion, it'll be fair even without the prison clause."

His raised brows simply emphasized the lethal and undeniable truth of Jax's claim, "There's just too much history between me and Tara." With no room for rebuttal he roughly added, "She'll always be mine."

"You selfish little prick," Kozik exclaimed, "you never fucking deserved her."

"Careful, Kozik," Jax rightly cautioned, "or I might just forget you're a brother." His temper broiling, he lowly added, "You don't know a thing about me and Tara."

"Really, Jax," Kozik argued back, "I know a lot more about Tara than you do now. I know that she didn't just lose the baby, Salazar's attack messed something up, she probably can't even have kids now." The blonde pompously needled his rapidly fraying temper, "Did you know that?"

His brother verbally pushed, "Did you?"

 _No._

 _He hadn't._

 _She hadn't told him._

"That doesn't matter," Jax gritted out in denial. "Because she's mine."

"Really," Kozik demanded incredulously. "You think it doesn't matter to Tara?"

The other man drilled him incessantly, "You think it didn't matter to her after you broke her heart; stealing Abel from her just as much as that Irish fucker ever did?"

"No, of course it doesn't matter to you because," Kozik pushed up on him, "you had the stones to ask her to take custody of that very same kid you ripped from her arms by denying that she was family while Tara was still healing from being stabbed. Doc," he humorlessly smiled, "she did it though, knowing she was nothing but a glorified fucking nanny to that boy because she's loyal."

"Yeah," Jax couldn't help but agree even though he was bleeding inside, "she's always been loyal."

"You miserable bastard. Tara knows," Kozik spit out as they lunged for each other, pieces of their cuts knotted in fists, their ties of brotherhood ready to break. "She knows what an asshole you truly were and the _only_ Teller male that Tara's heart is faithful to now is your son; she doesn't trust you worth a damn anymore."

Rage pumped hard and fast through his system as Jax _tried_ to remember that it wasn't his brother's fault that things with Tara were such an epic clusterfuck but it wasn't working.

"Hey," her soft voice hesitantly interrupted their near brawl, "what's going on here?"

"Nothing," both men instantly gritted out amid the taut silence of the brothers that were hurriedly surrounding them; watchful and wary.

Heaving a huge breath, Jax uneasily released the other man as Tara cautiously looked back and forth between them. Obviously, his woman didn't like whatever she saw simmering beneath the surface of his lapsing control when her gaze skimmed over him again and landed straight on Kozik with her request, "You still following me back to my place since I'm keeping Opie and Lyla's kids tonight."

"Sure, Tara," his brother suddenly turned nemesis smirked triumphantly at him, "be right there."

As his woman carefully walked away over the uneven ground in her heeled sandals, Kozik leaned back toward him and lowly warned, "Don't even think of using your kid to pull her back in again, Brother, or I'll kick your ass six ways to Sunday. You've hurt her enough."

* * *

Tired, exhausted, totally wrecked; Jax slowly crawled into the single, austere bunk and wrapped all that he had left of his woman around him like a cocoon hoping to emerge from it in a better state with the morning sun.

Tara might have remained in Charming; stayed there at his house all this time but never in their room. No, she'd put up this small bed in the spare room that should have been a nursery for their second son but hadn't changed anything else. Anywhere but, apparently, her heart.

There wasn't any of her chic shit now, not even something as impersonal as her favorite brand of toothpaste in the bathroom. Tara couldn't have made it more abundantly clear that she didn't consider herself part of his life anymore if she'd built a fucking brick wall between them but the plain cotton sheets still smelled of her.

Soft. Sweet. _His_.

He'd learned long ago, that his house wasn't his home unless Tara was there sharing it all with him.

Raking a despairing hand down his face, Jax lay there in the pitch black and realized that his days would all soon turn to that same consuming darkness if he couldn't somehow turn this around. The stone barricade he'd needed to put around his heart for protection while in Stockton started to crumble as the tears silently flowed down his face. _Oh, Babe_ , he desperately cried to himself, his body finally wrought with utter grief, _What had he done?_

Jax had been so sure that he could fix this; now, the doubt couldn't help but seep in and cast long shadows behind all the ghosts of things left unsaid between them.

Sniffles darted toward the edge of the bed as Abel sleepily cried, "Want Ta Ta."

Biting back the razor sharp pain those words whipped across his heart, Jax pulled his boy into the narrow bed and lowly soothed, "I know, Son."

Roughly, he whispered, "I want your Momma too but I messed up bad. I'm so sorry, Little Man."

 _So damn sorry._


	2. Next Contestant

**So a big THANK YOU to anyone who has alerted, sent a PM, or, especially, reviewed this latest fictional baby of mine. Never really know how to respond to feedback or input but it's all loved and always appreciated.**

 **Seems we've got a general consensus about a few things; mainly, Jax suffering for a bit and needing our favorite couple to eventually work their way back to each other. While there are some diverging opinions about just what might be acceptable behavior or not for them as well as other characters. Some cannon will remain true across the board for certain key characters while others will shift slightly. I find all the comments intriguing and, hopefully, you'll find the story just as invigorating as we work through it all. As always, thanks for reading.**

* * *

He'd simply been gone from her for far too long and, now, the not knowing was slowly killing him.

 _Again_.

Draining Jax of much needed hope drip by sluggish drip, marking him with every imagined touch that had likely passed between them- Tara and his brother- leaving him with a bloody trail of woe instead of his weeping regret. The perceived injury so grievous; the damage wouldn't be something Jax knew how to remedy.

Agitated, frankly pissed; he had tried to rearrange the tangle of slender limbs that had dubiously wrapped around him like a suffocating knot of tiny humanity. Again. Yet, try as he might, the constricting confines of the twin mattress was a gross misnomer even for just him and his kid. There was no way the two of them were going to slip comfortably into slumber when his incessant worry over Tara now hogged the majority of the space in his head never mind taking up the remainder of the cramped bed. Frustrated, thoroughly wrecked even while greedily counting all the ways he could torture Kozik for his supposed offenses instead of banal sheep to fall asleep; Jax had officially reached his limit. Patience completely obliterated after the umpteenth fucking time he'd narrowly escaped Abel's small foot nailing him directly in the balls like the striking appendage was a sledgehammer bent on destroying the original root of his old man's problem for him.

Or, more likely, for Tara.

Furious at the whole damn situation; he'd hurriedly bundled them both into the cab of his gray truck and high tailed it to Tara's place heedless of the belated hour for some answers. Never an idle boy; his time with the Sons had honed him into even more of a man of rapid fire action as Jax only braked when his heavy fist finally hit her front door.

The inky sky behind him foretold a rather damning testament to his accusation as Jax darkly confronted the barely opened entryway, "You trying to teach me a lesson here, Tara? Is that what this is?"

"Hmm, Jax," she groggily greeted his pounding summons. Slowly, momentarily bewildered until a clearly unamused awakening finally dawned across her pale features bit by bit; she gaped. "What?"

"With Kozik," he roughly demanded. Not particularly wanting to spit out the name of a brother whose blood he unexpectedly wanted to spill but needing to know how deep the wounds of betrayal had sunk regardless. Jax had never been weak; his time behind bars making that even less of an understatement. He'd sure as hell face his problems like a man by squaring off with them down the loaded barrel of Tara's current weapon of choice; the piercing truth.

There'd been a time that Tara's only association with Redwood had been through him. His trust and affection had been her all too reluctant gateway into a brutally violent world that his woman had never truly understood. While her love had always been a cleaner window into the outside world of possibility; purer at heart than anything he'd ever experienced before or since because she'd been his very own calming balm amid the anarchy that raged in his mind, soul, and club.

The normally serene waters she'd tread with such newfound maturity upon her return to Charming still made Tara look like his personally flowing oasis in the moonlight; her slender form a deep pool of seeming innocence now awash in his galling late night insinuation. A malstrom of blatant disappointment swiftly churned in the depths of her roiling gaze - all too briefly sending a rescuing wave of denying relief his way - before it was all swept away. Leaving behind only a foamy blankness of doubt. The hollow shell of her insular silence the only remaining trace of her earlier revulsion and offense at his unseemly inference.

Still, Jax _needed_ her to confirm whether Tara had succumbed to even a moment of scorned vengeance with another man whether the agony of that cheating knowledge would flatly level him or not.

Eventually, her tone steadily approaching even - almost untouched by the shadier elements of his gritty indictment - Tara purposefully sidestepped his question with her very own measure of censure and evaded, "You shouldn't have had him attack Wendy, Jax."

Unexpectedly struck by her condemning salvo instead of her faithful reassurance, Jax instantly defended himself in vein, "It needed to be done, Babe." He stressed his point, "To protect you and Abel."

"No, Jax. That wasn't fair to either of them," Tara's arms folded protectively in front of her chest in a way that barred more than just his feeble explanation when she meaningfully added. "Not with their shared history."

There was something very telling about the weary silence that lingered around Tara as she somberly stared him down from a too rapidly rising higher ground that alerted Jax to something elementally more going on here. It wasn't the conspicuously missing lack of a denial that she obviously felt didn't need to be voiced. Tara wasn't feeling guilt or culpability right now. She wasn't expressing outrage or righteous indignation either. No, his woman was exhibiting something far more dangerous to his way of thinking.

She was simply tired.

Of him.

And, the sheer magnitude of his illicit bullshit.

Because he'd obviously fucked up, again; when the incarcerated father had stupidly sent one junkie to needle rape another by cheaply slamming that speedball into Wendy's arm for his family's protection. He wasn't certain which was worse; that Tara actually knew the twisted depths of his malicious cunning or just why Kozik had been motivated to share that dirty slice of his preemptive paternal justice to begin with.

Either way, there was literally nothing that compelled Tara to utter excuses for her behavior right now nor rode her to offer up the crowing victory of her previously feared revenge either. She was merely resolved to his obviously unwanted presence; that much truth shone through the stillness of the night with the blinding brilliance of a fucking spotlight.

This was a Tara he didn't know how to handle; disdainful, closed off, and remotely indifferent. To him.

"You wanna talk about shared history," his jaw clenched in guttural challenge desperately needing to remind her of their once intimate connection. "Let's start with _ours_ then."

"No, Jackson, we're ... _I'm_ not doing this," she calmly denied with a distancing formality that nearly drove him insane. "Not with your headlights glaring into my living room window in the middle of the night and, definately not, while Opie and Lyla's kids are sleeping right inside. Besides," she unequivocally stated trying to quickly shut him out even further, "you should be home with Abel."

"I was," he abruptly forestalled her all too cool dismissal with a self-belittling chuckle devoid of all cockiness. "Couldn't sleep with both of us crammed into _your_ bed."

If Jax hadn't been studying every nuance of his woman so carefully that he soaked Tara up like a greedy human sponge; he might have missed it. That all too fleeting moment of translucent vulnerability that etched her painful longing and sheer despair across her suddenly fragile features in stark contrast to the image of the hardened woman she'd been meticulously trying to reflect when she brokenly whispered, "Who's with him now?"

"Nobody," he briskly nodded at the still running vehicle with a raised brow. "I brought him with me in the truck."

Before Jax could wonder why the hell else Tara thought they would have been arguing on her stoop instead of him quickly shuffling her inside so that they could bar the neighbor's from digging their noses into their nocturnal dirt; his woman was on the move. Instantly, that previously withdrawn stare focused on the truck - all eager and needy - the pretense of her indifference completely fallen away.

"You left him there," she scurried past him; the words trailing behind her down to a single, haunting specter of memory. " _Alone_." The phantom accusation floating in the memory laced timbre of her voice made quick work of his condemning fugue and the few remaining steps it took to cover the minimal distance to the passenger side window he'd left open.

"Tara, he's fine," he quickly reassured; readily shadowing her movement. "Really, Babe, Abel fell asleep again on the drive over."

"That's not the point, Jax," she plainly scolded him like he was a recalcitrant schoolboy sent to clap the erasers at recess instead of an equally concerned parent all while Tara's maternal gaze never left their sleeping child. "He shouldn't be out here like _this_."

Tara didn't need to further vocalize the underlying condemnation of her truncated ire; the gut wrenching truth that swiftly burned through his system with an all too searing belief declared that what she really meant was that _he_ shouldn't be out there, fighting for her, not like this.

* * *

Apparently, Tara had been making the rounds.

At least, that's what his mother had not so idly informed Jax of when she'd arrived on the automotive lot a bit ago. That the good doctor was merely escorting the newly hitched Winston family's various offspring to their respective classrooms this morning and then heading straight toward Teller-Morrow so that she could collect Abel for his usual stint at the St. Thomas daycare center.

Doubtfully, Jax quirked his brows at his notoriously opinionated mother who stood hovering by the swings with him as he pushed the boisterous son currently under discussion. "You okay with that shit now?"

"Yeah, he gets to mix it up with all those rich little shits," the biking matriarch nonchalantly waved off his underlying sarcasm as Gemma negligently puffed out her smoke along with a prideful boast. "Already runs the preschool crew."

He let that soak in for a moment; unbelievably enjoying the lighter moment of revery wafting around them with her unfiltered exhale. One of the first he'd had since his release yesterday.

"What," she huffed back at his continued disbelief.

"Nothing," he rejoined with a sardonic grin. "Just don't think they make scary enough stick figures for a SAMCRO family. Might need to get you some custom vinyl work done for that back window, Grandma."

Of course, the shit kicking biker goddess who'd been like a maternal zealot since his birth would probably have worn a stupid ass t-shirt that read 'my kid was inmate of the month' if Stockton had issued them a few sizes too small and slashed all to hell. Probably even give a whole new meaning to the bumpers with the label that declared 'my kid can pick yours off' that the little league folks ridiculously sported. So the imagined decal of a toddler dragging a reaper brandishing a 'babies of mayhem' insignia should be right in Gemma's wheelhouse; just as disturbing as the volatile, sometimes unbalanced, woman who'd birthed him.

"Jax," his mother haltingly chastised in a pitch that was all too rife with his business, "this has been important to Tara."

"Yeah, I get that," he stated without amusement. And, he did. Tara would be just the type of parent to have constantly worried about Abel's social skills developing right along with his little body. Still. He dejectedly grimaced, "Just seems that a lot of new things have become important to her while I was away."

"Jackson," his mother suspiciously cautioned. "Where you going with that?"

"I'm just trying to put things back together here, Mom," he sighed with resignation as he gave Abel another gentle push on the swing, "but-"

"But," she mockingly cut him off, "your late night pussy patrol didn't go quite like you planned. _Yeah_ ," his mother scoffed at his blank stupidity. "Tara mentioned you'd stopped by."

"Mom," he started, strangely puzzled by the closeness the two most important women in his life now shared. "Don't-"

"The thing with Kozik," she deliberately talked over him again shaking her head. "It's not what you're thinking, Baby." There was an entire universe of all too messy, prideful understanding in her phrase, as she placated. "Not for her."

"Jesus, Mom," he achingly queried too ripe with the pain of another fresh wound. "What am I supposed to do here?" Desperation seeped out to bleed all over his terse claim, "She won't even talk to me about any of this shit."

Still pissed that Tara even had a thing of any sort with another man, never mind, a patched brother to even be discussing. One that only his mother was even feebly attempting to explain to him with her lame assed endeavor; instead, of the woman who should have been more than just steadfast at his son's side this whole time. The woman that should have turned to him by letting Jax help her through their mutual loss rather than ruthlessly shutting him out at every fucking turn.

"You gotta give her some time, Baby," his mother's advice wrapped around the angry loss and grief that had become a living entity within him, choking off the rancid breath of the parasitic discord that thrived on his continued sorrow and misery. "Both of you some time," she wistfully murmured.

"When my Thomas died, I shut your father out," she reminded him with shameful self-ridicule. "Blamed him. Took some of that guilt upon myself-"

"Mom, stop," he roughly interrupted. "It's not the same."

The denial readily pursed on her stained lips told him that his mother certainly didn't agree with him but Gemma wisely kept her mouth closed for once. Yet, her sage counsel resounded through the hollows of his soul anyway, echoing a poignant sentiment of rightness and verity to her historical declarations.

Shrewdly, as his mother had certainly intended, her assessment had him crazily eyeballing the situation in an entirely different light. All of this time, Jax had known that he was to blame, that their anguished misfortune and sorrow filled tragedy were a direct result of his bad doings and that his Old Lady had only been an innocent victim in all of it. He'd spent all these months regretfully assuming that Tara had readily faulted him as well given her galling silence but it killed Jax to think that his wallowing penance might have allowed her to absorb even the tiniest bit of that responsibility as well.

"She's still here, Baby," all traces of his mother's normal pit bull persona gone as Gemma waded through the strong current of her own river of bitter nostalgia. "You just hold onto that."

Maybe, that's all he really had the right to ask for right now. After all the damage he'd done in the past, Jax would suffer through the interminable wait for Tara just as he had been doing, somehow, but her causing them current injury; that was never gonna slide. That shit just couldn't be ignored.

Neither could the brother causing the insult for much longer; Jax had a duty to his family and his patch that he would never just set aside or brush off. Neither could he arbitrarily just overlook the slights sent his way last night even if Kozik gave him a damn good reason; his pride wouldn't let him.

* * *

Clearly, his old man had woven hard truth into his prophetic ramblings because Clay was cashing out at the entire club's expense with his latest subversive negotiations. Using Jax's innate fear of losing his family and the brothers' collective greed to keep them banded together. There was no way around that tarnished nugget of realization but Jax thought that maybe, just maybe, he'd still be able to salvage a little treasure for himself after being sunk momentarily low once again by another potentially backstabbing brother. That's why Jax had negotiated with the self-serving leader and exchanged his dirty vote for even a slim chance at a clean future with Tara and his boy. Now that brighter possibility seemed to dim even further as he faced down the mute denial of his best friend.

The big man beside him in the tight confines of the truck wasn't brooding; Op was simply ignoring him.

Jax had spent over a year playing the humbled part of the invisible man in the ensemble cast of Tara's world - suffering under the heavy script of that deserved retribution - but he sure as fuck didn't need to reprise that same role in his closest pal's life as well.

Opening their much needed dialogue, he asked, "When you were inside what did you think about?"

"Donna, the kids," Opie immediately replied without hesitation. The grizzly man's focus split between the moderate traffic as he drove and their stilted conversation.

"Yeah, me too," Jax sighed in natural agreement. "Tara and my boy, Tara and my boy," he gritted out sorely knowing that it should have been plural, that they should have had two children now instead of a bouncing toddler and a bundle of loss straining the gap between them even further. Swallowing down the hard lump of regret, he admitted, "Wondering how the hell I was going to take care of them; get Tara back, stay whole, be a descent father."

"Pushing coke was your solution," Op drew on his cigarette in inhaling disbelief.

"No," Jax denied not wanting to admit that earning big was or just why, yet. "Look I know running with the cartel is serious business but I want to be able to offer something more to Tara and my boy."

The cab was tense; filled with the various dissenting opinions that had already been put forth during church. Both of them knowing there was merit in the conflicting viewpoints, that while SAMCRO needed the cartel's umbrella of protection while the threat of Russian rage steadily rained down on them; they didn't need the impending storm of another Federal investigation either.

"You know I watched Tara take care of your kid through her own recovery. That's a strong chick, man, she really stepped up even with all your bullshit," his brother mercilessly quipped, "but, Lyla, I love her but she's no Donna." Opie blew out a ring of hopeless smoke, "If I go away, she'd never be able to take care of three kids on her own. I can't do that to her."

"And, you shouldn't either, Brother," Opie meaningfully chided, "because Tara would never sign off on you doing this shit." Devilishly, his pal compulsively grinned, "Even if she does want to skewer your balls right about now."

"Yeah," Jax fitfully nodded. She certainly did. Especially after his jealous accusations.

Ruefully, Jax remembered all that Kozak had railed him with the night before at Op's wedding. All that he'd selfishly asked of Tara when he'd had no right to, still didn't but, damn it, he still wanted it. _Her_. A family with her and Abel so bad he could fucking taste it the need ran so deeply through him - regardless of the current ambiguity between them - that he'd probably bleed it with his very last breath.

"Me and my nuts," Jax reluctantly sighed; purposefully minimizing the potential danger of partnering with the cartel because surely he'd already hit his maximum accumulation of calamity where his family was concerned. "We're all gonna be just fine. The cartel is protected."

"You sound like you're trying to convince yourself as much as me," his long-time tag along murmured.

Maybe, he was. Jax couldn't deny that he was desperately trying to assure himself that he and Tara would somehow work this miserable situation out. Garnering solace from her continued presence in Charming was thin comfort after last evening but it still cloaked him in the tattered rags of hope nonetheless.

And, those remnants were enough, at least for now, for Jax to back Clay's short term solution.

* * *

"That shit was brutal man," Happy stated devoid of his usual macabre glee for all things bloodsport.

"Had to be done," Jax hastily swiped a thumb over his rapidly swelling lip ready to bust into the encroaching asshole across the concrete pad all over again if the dirty blonde put so much as one traitorous toe in Tara's now appalled direction. There was a definite cold war being waged and it had nothing to do with the dead Russians that had littered Charming that morning. It was the chilly stalemate that remained between him and Tara after what she'd just witnessed.

"I know, Brother," Bobby's heavy sigh was as deep as the girth of his waist. "Shit like this, especially now," the older man's words emphasized the shitstorm of danger they were all headed straight into if they voted to run more than guns for the Galindo cartel, "it can break a charter apart."

"Yeah, I know," Jax stonily conceded. "But he's been trying to break my family apart," Jax spit out with a gutteral fierceness that promised a more savage reckoning for that taboo transgression if Kozik's undermining shenanigans didn't stop. Immediately.

"You're domestic situation is gonna have to take a backseat at the table, Son," Clay sagely advised with a fathomless pit of ruthless meaning behind it; especially, after Romeo had just swooped in and saved his and Opie's collective asses in the aftermath of the club's bloody Putlova revolution. "At least, for now."

"No, Clay, this kind of thing," Tig gainsaid with a disgusted upturn of his mouth. "That's why I couldn't patch him back in."

"Aye," Chibs shouldered the obvious blame being thrown his way amid their contentious rumblings, "but we did, Brother." His thick Scots brogue accentuated his quelling words, "And, Jackie Boy," he nodded with undisguised pride, "he's set him straight now."

There was no doubt about the message Jax's fists had relentlessly battered into the interloping brother's body. No mistaking that Jax was implacably seated as the reigning contender for Tara's affections, that he'd have absolutely no problem bruising that sentiment all along the muscled sinew of the next man that tried to step to his woman as an upstart contestant in the ring of their present standoff either.

The only male who might be able to knock Jax out of his top billing came barreling straight at his father as he cried, "Want Ta Ta."

"Shit, Jax," Juice split the lingering tension with his goofy grin. "Is the little guy already asking for his first pair of tits?"

"No, douchebag," Jax disparaged, "my kid's asking for his mother."

"We weren't in Stockton that long, Juicy," Bobby cavalierly muttered.

"How was I supposed to know," the Puerto Rican eagerly defended himself. "Shouldn't he be like, I don't know, making those M sounds or something."

"Tara won't let him call her anything but her name," Opie settled the discussion with that very telling revelation over the assemblage delivering just as much of an emotive blow to Jax's strained psyche as the dark Q-tips overly officious wreckage to their clubhouse earlier. Somberly, his best pal added through the shroud of his beard, "Only thing that she and Gemma seem to fight about anymore."

"What the fuck, Jax," Tig stared at him asconce. "Now that's really messed up."

The irony of that statement wasn't lost on any of them especially when it was coming from the brother who was most likely to cum outside the lines of all common decency and, certainly, had, on one too many occasions for any of their comfort. No matter, the mind boggling possibility that Tara and his mother had called some sort of detente while he'd been cooped up behind bars. Their truce only faltering upon this one point of contention made Jax think that Opie might have been toking up just as much as his old man while they'd been gone.

"Sorry, Brother," Bobby clapped him on the back in a manly clasp of support, "that things are still so rough with her."

"Thanks, Bobby," Jax grudgingly accepted the show of camaraderie that he'd become all too used to among his brothers for the olive branch it was purely intended to be after their previous dissension. However, Jax figured that it was only a temporary reprieve until the voting members had to cast their lots on whether the club would be muling Galindo's blow or not. Just like his fists pounding into Kozik's face had only blessed him with an interim hiatus from the unrelenting need for Tara that constantly plagued him.

* * *

"Men need to own their pussy, Baby," the matriarch dubiously reminded Tara knowing that the younger woman hadn't technically violated her son's but still wholly understanding Jax's pummeling need to reassert his proprietorship anyway.

"Jesus, Gemma," the still learning brunette looked at her from across the cramped office like Tara had suddenly transformed into an anxious, wary animal cornered by uncertain fear instead of the strong Old Lady just fighting with her man that the surgeon had skillfully portrayed all of this time under Gemma's tutelage. "When is this all going to ease up?"

"My son loves deep, Tara," Gemma cautioned with a certain heaviness. "Hates deeper. He's not going to let anyone hurt his family, Baby," she underscored with certainty, "not if he can help it."

"This is crazy," the doctor shook her head in denial. "You know what I've been doing with Kozik."

Stubbornly, Tara was still unwilling to recognize that the same heartache she shoved down so deep, buried under so many layers of misunderstanding and silence, had taken root in Jax as well. That they were both still a fallow ground of mutual desolation; their hearts just waiting to plow over the hard spots toward much needed forgiveness and reconciliation so that their love could bloom again.

Yet, Gemma couldn't help but see it and needed to cultivate the fertile possibility of their reunion.

"You agreed that my job here as his Old Lady has been to be strong for Abel when and where Jax couldn't. That's it," Tara's hard tone turned thin and brittle. "He was the one who ... changed things," she raised her hands with a cracking incredulity. "Not me."

"You know why he did all of that, Sweetheart," she couldn't help consoling Tara. "If you'd just talk to him. Tell Jax about what happened to you, to the baby, so you both -"

"Don't go there, Gemma," Tara instantly blanched. The weight of those words battering the now emotionally delicate woman with nearly the same vicious ferocity that her boy had just rabidly employed to beat down on his brother. "You promised."

"Okay, Baby," the biking matriarch verbally soothed the distraught woman she needed to eventually reconcile with her son. The sooner the better to her way of thinking but Gemma placated anyway. "Not until you're ready."

"Gemma," the younger brunette forewarned, "you've got to tell them soon."

Gemma felt the first foundational block, the emotional cornerstone, of Tara's former wall of protection being mentally laid between them once again with that blatant reminder. Wondered if the surgical architect would eventually rebuild to similar specifications as the one that Tara had so successfully forged in their past; each stony memory placed upon rocky exchange to fortify her against the cruel reminder of the harsh rules that bloodily reigned over her Son's world.

She didn't like it. At all. This had never been part of her plan.


	3. Poison & Wine

Daylight had mercilessly crept in along with his son. Reluctantly pulling Jax from the sleepy, desire filled memory he'd been blissfully reliving with Tara in his dreamy state right into the nightmarish reality of painful morning wood, a thoroughly distraught toddler, and her unkempt little bed.

Just another less than charming reminder of the beautiful life they weren't living together.

 _Yet_.

Sighing, the resigned father had soothed a work roughened hand over Abel's disgruntlement trying to harness the boy's distraught babbling into a more tamed situation. It hadn't gone quite as smoothly as Jax would have preferred which seemed to be the unwanted norm of things for the biker since his release.

Riding solo through the rocky first steps of Abel's morning ritual again - one that Jax was woefully untrained in since he hadn't been partnered with his family during the intricate dance of their well rehearsed sunrise routine because he'd been reduced to merely background music during his bid in Stockton - the father and son had finally made their way to St. Thomas.

Squeaks from Abel's sneakers tearing down the sterile corridor alerted the staid surgeon up ahead of their impending arrival. Instantly, Tara's cooly reserved facade melted into something soft, open, all too vulnerable and warmly loving - all the things his woman hadn't been toward him since long before his release - now easily poured over his boy as she scooped his tiny frame straight into her waiting maternal embrace. Her sweet words rich as thick syrup when Tara exchanged wholly nourishing greetings with the child who'd been her charge for so long; both of them happily eating up the others presence while leaving him ravenously starved for even a stingy morsel of her recognition.

It hurt; cut him deep but Jax couldn't fault his boy's innate need to taste her affections, to greedily soak them up, and claim every last honeyed drop while they were being so readily served up.

Jax would be a glutton as well if Tara ever truly let him sample the perfection of her delicious goods again.

"Hey, Babe," he just couldn't resist stealing a forbidden bite of her focus for himself. "You doing okay?"

"Jax," the delight that had formerly glazed her fatigued eyes slightly hardened when Tara turned to bleakly address him for the first time after the altercation with Kozik last night, smothered in an overly clingy coat of his Mommy whipped little boy, and all too ready to ice his ass out once again. "I'm fine."

 _Hardly_.

She wasn't fine.

Neither of them were but his woman adamantly defended her well fortified position against him anyway; a ramrod of steely resolve strengthening her backbone as Tara verbally pinned him down, "Gemma was supposed to bring Abel this morning. Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's good, Babe. Just thought it would be nice for me to check this place out myself," he instantly offered by way of capitulation. "I don't want to mess with his routine or anything. Just trying to connect here."

"Yeah, I got that," the wary glint suddenly rimming her deep gaze let Jax know that Tara understood him all too well. There was no doubt in his mind that her tone held more than a hint of warning as she issued, "I'll just call her later."

"Well, Abel," his woman prudently reigned in her sudden inclination to challenge him at every turn by sedately overlooking his obvious double entendre with familial aplomb for their boy's sake, "let's show Daddy your cubby and introduce him to your teacher. Okay, Baby."

"Okay, Ta Ta," his boy exuberantly shimmied down to the floor to expertly dart into his well trod toddler stomping grounds ahead of them.

Tara might not realize it but his glib line wasn't purely about reminding her of their current disconnect. Jax really was interested in just what their kid was getting up to in Abel's new technicolor hood; where the darkly consuming approach to child rearing he'd been raised with was given vibrant relief by the vivid new shades of sharing that Gemma had somehow managed to adopt now without any fuss.

Conscientiously, the pert caregiver overlooked his ruffian fashion sense along with his rather intimidating demeanor and efficiently walked them through the basics with a congenial smile and a patently wrote speech that was neither concise or, for that matter, interesting. Her officious stance continued on, "No tree nuts, no junk food, no artificial colors, and, of course, no smart phones."

"Seriously," he interrupted, more than a little taken aback by the restrictive nature of the daycare's long list of rules as much as the crazy notion of a toddler having their own cellphone. Things had certainly come a long way since the sucrose hued Kool-Aid Mary, in her rare bouts of mothering, had served up to him and Opie considering it a healthy refreshment and it made him wonder, all over again, just how Tara had managed to sneak all of this pretentious bullshit past his mother.

"You'd be surprised at what some parents of means would allow their children," the administrator obliging informed. "Not you, of course, Dr. Knowles."

"Of course," the brunette physician beside him negligently brushed off the seemingly innocent comment making Jax sillently grizzle, not entirely sure just what about the exchange had irked him more. The thought of Tara's practically blasé dismissal of her role in Abel's life or this worker's assumptions about his woman's clout, financial or otherwise, in their small community.

"We like to counterbalance the over-consumption of electronic devices so prevalent with young minds today by encouraging Abel to express himself, even at this young age, by recording something by hand in his daily journal. Even if it's just a quickly drawn picture or a scribble of color," the overly progressive spiel droned on with an underlying tone of authority. "We allow him the necessary freedom to connect with his emotions through visual and tactile means."

"Yeah, that's good,"Jax begrudgingly acknowledged, finally hearing something that made any sense to him, knowing that a tiny hoarde of nondescript notebooks silently accepted the treasure of his truth without comment or judgement. There was no red ink notating corrections or proffering condemnation as he filled those blank pages with his unedited thoughts. Conspiratorially, he leaned down and tenuously admitted to his boy, "Hey, buddy, I do that too."

Almost instantaneously, Tara's face scrunched around her quasi mocking disbelief, "My badass biker journals."

Her skepticism nearly drowned out the heavy stream of pleasure that had unexpectedly rushed through his system with her claim; that single, possessive, word flooding him with no small measure of much needed relief and a sudden surge of overwhelming hope. Not wanting to disturb the gratification flowing from his woman's claim or deny the writings that unburdened his soul, Jax cleverly decided that it was time he capitalized on Tara's momentary lapse in stoicism.

Naturally, as if nothing had ever changed between them, he swept in and left a lingering kiss of departure along the softening line of her jaw doing just that.

It wasn't overly eager or desperately intense; it was simply right.

The kind of right that would never, couldn't ever, be anything other than his personal ideal of unadorned salvation. That sacred knowledge settled over them both with tingles of awareness right where his lips had smoothly brushed that truth against her tender skin; the perfect bit of respite needed in his ongoing battle toward reconciliation with her.

Gemma always admonished him to quit while he was ahead and, now, his leading edge was only increased by the long banked spark of answering need that had rapidly flared to life in Tara's stunned depths. Jax knew that his woman had been more than feeling him from that all too brief moment of burning accord as well and, that just like him, Tara would always love him right down to the marrow of her bones even if time or grieving distance tried to make her kindle the fire of a different claim. Neither of them had even been able to help it; their love was an inextinguishable constant seared right through their flesh down into the very essence of their entwined souls.

With a grin tinged with just as much hope as satisfaction, Jax decided not to further stoke the flames of his woman's impending temper or, worse, ignite another siege of her feigned indifference by reluctantly pulling away from the idyllic daycare scene with their son to answer his phone. As he listened, Jax heard both the minor blessing and the heavy curse in the caller's words knowing that whatever the gun hiccup was it would certainly keep him from over-pressing his new advantage with a suddenly very off-kilter brunette.

* * *

The hushed tones of their bedroom intimately snuggled around them in the late morning as Gemma gently led Clay down to the padded bench that rested at the foot of her slumbering demesne to give the King of her biking realm his due.

With an adept, enduring touch, Gemma lightly clasped Clay's gnarled hand in hers to give his ailing joints the royal treatment he'd unquestionably been missing while incarcerated. Slowly, she prodded while working her normal magic on her old man, "Will Kozik be transferring back to Tacoma now that you guys are out?"

"Worried your boy has some competition," her aging husband slyly replied with an accompanying hiss as she further pressed in the sharp injection of helping cortisone.

"No, Clay," she harrumphed back with a condescending stare of actual denial, "Tara's only been treating him."

"With what," the aging biker derided with his usual classless charm. "A good dose of her pussy?"

"Is that really all you can think about," Gemma flirtatiously chided to downplay the baser motives of their exchange, at least, hers. Somehow, still oddly stupefied by how little the man she'd married actually understood about familial ties even after all of these years together, Gemma's truer intentions remained rock steady.

"You really gotta ask, Baby," Clay enigmatically smirked running his already treated hand along the silken curve of her robe clad backside, "after all my time in Stockton."

"Hey, I got a needle here," she teasingly warned not wanting to succumb to them laying down together again just yet, at least, not until Gemma had the head biker's darker thoughts riding in absolute tandem with her rather time sensitive goals.

"And I've got something hard to pierce you with," his steely words of desire slithered all over her body along with Clay's intent gaze. His hungry eyes cataloguing far too much that Gemma didn't want focused on as her husband gruffly queried, "How come your feet are swollen? Something up with your meds?"

"No, Baby," she quickly disavowed with the reinforcing drag of her all too experienced fingers down his chest and on toward the trail of his happy distraction. "Just wanted to look good for your homecoming and skipped a few days."

"Gotta keep your ticker working right, Gem," Clay roughly breathed out along with a deep groan of pleasure as she worked his body with well practiced ease knowing that, eventually, given enough time, Gemma would have her way. She always did.

* * *

There was no license and registration needed as Jax unerringly sped down a lane that would quickly lead straight toward someone's death if they didn't get the cartel's guns back very soon.

He and Kozik had nearly ripped each other apart earlier with more than just rabid accusations. The guys swiftly acting as a pseudo-buffer to keep a repeat of last night's fight from happening all over again until Opie had very wisely told them to save this one for church. Now, however, Jax wasn't the one needing to be pulled back from the reaper's cutting edge. There was something all too aggressive, almost frantic, in his brother's movements as the dirty blonde who'd lost their weapons order roughly yanked that bloody flank of dark meat out of the stripped down muscle car and let his fists work like a heavy cleaver.

"Oh, shit," Tiggie muttered quickly recognizing something in their pulverizing brother that caused the normally violence prone Sergeant at Arms to worriedly appeal to the lean remnants still stuffed in the Nova's trunk.

"Now this guy here," Tig nodded toward their still pounding brother whose fists seemed to be feeling no pain. "He's cracked three of my ribs just giving me a hug." With a feral promise the SAA eerily expounded, "He is going to shatter your boys face unless you give it up."

"A'ight, God damn man," the ghetto baby finally snitched about their guns location and the temporary French connection that had taken custody of them but that didn't relieve the unease Jax still saw pouring off of Trager's laser focused countenance when Kozik didn't immediately back off tenderizing the other kid.

With uncertainty, Jax asked, "What's wrong?"

"I knew that bitch was lying," Tiggie automatically replied without taking his pointed attention away from their blonde brother as the other patched members gathered additional intel from the bruised pair of street ball hustlers.

"That it," Jax couldn't help but warily prod the older man not liking the intense vibe still pulsing around them. His gaze landing repeatedly on the pinpoints of ire erratically staring back at them from Kozik.

"Yeah," Tiggie tried to shrug off whatever had momentarily eclipsed his concentration and redirect it at their afternoon's prime objective; their product retrieval. "Let's go check on the truck."

Somehow, Jax knew that the weapons filled box top wasn't the only thing that needed some tabs kept.

* * *

Gemma didn't need a shot of Piney's liquid Mexican lunch to know that her world was now spinning wickedly out of control.

Obviously, she'd known that Clay had regrettably come out of SAMCRO's latest stretch slightly colder and even more mercenary, but, suddenly, things were really starting to unravel faster than she could possibly knit them back together. The loose strings of her loved ones that she'd been meticulously trying to weave into a strong and cohesive swath of family unity were snagging on unforeseen problems and starting to slip even further from her once sure grasp.

Still gasping for breath after her near violent confrontation with Clay, Gemma knew without a doubt that she was now clearly running out of those precious sands of time. Her club was going to end up muling blow for the Galindo cartel, or worse, if she didn't do something to curb Clay's avaricious plans for the eventuality of his forced retirement. And, her family, well, that just made her heart strain even harder in the face of Clay's almost brutal threat.

Slowly, she made her way back to the cluttered Teller-Morrow office and slumped into her chair desperately needing the foolproof support and familiarity of her dingy surroundings at the moment.

This was beyond bad.

Gemma needed Tara right now, more than ever, but this latest bombshell was not something that could be shared with the still reticent surgeon. She needed to keep the potential danger that information posed away from Tara, if at all possible, because the younger woman was already far too leery of their outlaw lifestyle. The brunette had good reason but all of her medical knowledge and expertise hadn't allowed the good doctor to master the trepidation that still crept around in her mind like the bogeyman, feeding off of the horrific memories of her attacks, and keeping her stuck in the limbo of sometimes paralyzing fear in the aftermath of that trauma.

Her mind racing along with her labored heart, Gemma knew that whatever treacherous path she tried to walk alone right now, she'd surely falter. Instead, the matriarch tenaciously forced her body to submit to her legendary iron will as she methodically worked through all of her options.

Tara had urged her to tell them the truth but the physician didn't specify just which of her many secrets Gemma should divulge first. Desperately, still trying to keep the collateral damage in her realm to a minimum, the notorious biking queen thought as she heard the loud rumble of numerous Harleys returning to their white trash castle that maybe it was time to offer up the sins of a Son as a shield of protection against this impending vote.

* * *

The ride back to the clubhouse had been arduous at best knowing all the bullshit Jax had already waded through since leaving Tara and their boy this morning just to get his grubby hands back on their even dirtier black market weapons. It was truly an exasperating deal all around knowing that every moment of the day, all of their lives, had literally been on the line because Jax had never been foolish enough to think, even for a mere second, that he'd have survived a tête à tête with the Galindo frontman. Certainly not one in which SAMCRO was forced to explain how hardware that had already been paid for was no longer available for their first delivery - especially not after the serious firepower that Romeo and his bloody little band of sharp shooters had already laid down for him and Opie out on the reservation yesterday - and, definitely not knowing that the cartel wouldn't settle that unpaid debt without immediate reprisal to more than just the men there wearing the cut.

Hell, no. That was not a meeting he'd have wanted to take. Ever.

Jax should have been relieved to know that they'd, fortunately, never have to sit down for that brutally frank discussion - emphasis on the barbarous nature of that particular soiree - but he wasn't. He wasn't even that eager to get this muling vote squared off at the moment either.

Not even as Opie entrusted him with the confidence of his and Miles votes - maybe, even less so after that because somehow Jax knew somewhere deep and cavernously hollow inside that he was lying - either to his best pal or, worse, to himself.

And, right now, he wasn't sure which would actually be the more heinous betrayal.

As they lumbered their way down the concrete pad, Jax couldn't help but hear the strained overtures of another duo all too readily testing the limits of their hastily mended friendship.

"I fucked up," the blonde contentiously admitted from near the boxing ring. "I know I'm messed up again but you didn't see her after you guys went inside. After she found out about what Jax did to Salazar -"

"You're shitting me right now," Tig vehemently scoffed in rebuttal. "Right, Brother."

"No, man, maybe...I don't know," Kozik shook his head in a jittery, all too confused, denial. "One minute I was just looking out for Tara like any patch would and, the next, it was like I needed to protect her."

"Koz, man," Tig instantly shook his head in blatant disbelief, "you got no call being in Jax's business that way." The curly haired biker fervently added with underlying concern, "You know that, Brother."

"I know, Tiggie," the overwrought blonde anxiously paced back and forth, "but she helps me too."

"Helps you with what," Jax couldn't keep from interrupting the less than confidential argument being aired like so much dirty laundry for any brother or hanger on to hear the vile and sordid details of an affair that might just shred him to bloody ribbons of tortured regret.

"Shit, Jax," Kozik's head guiltily whipped around at the rather loud disruption of his sharply pointed demand. "Man, I'm sorry for all the shit today."

"Not yet," Jax angrily jeered the insinuating promise of his raised brows, "but you will be if you don't answer the question about my Old Lady real soon."

Tig and Opie both issued simultaneous warnings - one a gutterally low caution of his name and the other a silent shadowing presence at his shoulder - that he similarly ignored. His blood pumping hard and fast, rigidly commanding him to take action; to physically require an answer under the most extreme duress if necessary as Jax instinctively closed in on the brother who'd been dodgy as hell for too long already.

"With Narcan," the small, haunted, admission floated back and forth in Jax's mind like a shame filled flag of surrender from the other man. The words all too white and absolving as he finally understood the seemingly intimate connection of his woman's protective nature toward his brother.

 _Damn_.

His mother had certainly been right that Tara's relationship with Kozik wasn't anything like he'd been jealously mapping out with his speculations. He'd been so far off the mark; he wasn't even in the same fucking hemisphere.

Hesitantly, Jax somberly inquired already knowing from the pit of dread rapidly spiraling in his stomach as impugning bile and bitter lament roughly churned together that his woman had probably already told him in her annoyingly evasive manner of speaking to him now, "How long you been using again?"

Sagely, Jax knew what was all too likely coming his way but, still, he wasn't fully prepared for the onslaught of recriminating blows his conscience self-inflicted either as Kozik quietly confirmed, "Since Wendy."

 _Christ_.

He closed his eyes in near defeat; no wonder Tara had wanted nothing to do with him now as she resolutely tried to freeze him out at almost every turn. All the insidious things he'd tried to hide from her or innately justify; Tara already knew their devastating consequences. He must seem like a remorseless monster in reaper clothing forever committing such indiscriminately vile acts of omission or commission against both those he claimed to care about and those he equally loathed that she no longer recognized a redeeming difference in him.

Jax knew he wasn't a good man. He was a criminal. A killer, hell, he'd murdered a Fed right in front of Tara for her safety and peace of mind but somehow his woman had still been able to see something loyal, almost noble, in him despite those harsh realities. She'd still loved him and had chosen to remain steadfastly by his side until that broken moment laid between them in her hospital room.

Tara had numbly told him then but it wasn't until this exact moment that he fully understood the incisive depth of truth in her words because his woman really held no illusions about him anymore. She saw him now with a brutal clarity that stripped him bare of all his charming pretenses, left him with no legitimate cover for his actions, and with no emotionally safe place to hide.

This morning, Jax had pushed an advantage with her and Tara had inescapably capitulated. The reticent response blazing in her eyes had given him a sense of hopeful peace at the undimmed connection still dwelling in her heart. Now, that sentiment wasn't nearly as endearing because Jax knew with just as much certainty that if Tara was ever given a choice; she'd have smartly decided to stop loving him.

All of this time Tara might not have physically left Charming but she'd certainly posted an unenforceable eviction notice on her heart.

And that base knowledge scared all the manly pride and cocky bravado right out of him because there was no merit in occupying his woman's affections by grudging default like some unwanted squatter. Without a doubt, he ultimately needed the intimacy of her respect and the comfort of her willing trust and acceptance again because Tara would always own every part of him whether either of them wanted to change that possession or not now; they couldn't.

Desperately, Jax needed to make his woman want that unalterable state of their hearts again, otherwise; he'd be reduced to nothing but a lethally mocking shell of the man they'd both once believed him to be.

* * *

Humbled but not irrevocably crushed, yet, Jax stared at Tara across the widening expanse of her living room. The gravelly plea escaped to bridge the ravaged and barren hollows of Jax's soul without her, "Babe, please let me back in."

The jagged edges of his shattered heart shredded back and forth against themselves like the cutting teeth of a rusty saw, making him bleed even more, with every clenching beat it took away from the healing balm of Tara's loving forgiveness. It was a spirit numbing hemorrhage that he hadn't been able to cauterize with any of the burning promises that he'd made himself the last fourteen months while caged in Stockton like an abandoned felonious animal. He'd desperately needed the panacea of his woman's unwavering gaze as the steadfast surgeon began to repair the damage he'd wrought between them then by her mere presence.

Instead, Jax had been left with a bitter pill of nothing to swallow as a remedy to the destruction he'd self-prescribed by his own betraying actions. He'd come from a family of Harley loving outlaws that damn sure seemed to take the wrong road every time no matter if he'd had better intentions motivating his cheating actions than his father before him; it didn't change the outcome. Jax knew that he was solely to blame for all the misery that stretched between them now.

He was the one to leave Tara vulnerable, alone, and, ultimately, bloodied and broken by the ruthless hand of his enemy. Salazar might have wielded the sharp blade that tore into Tara's tender flesh and prematurely ended the all too fragile life of their unborn child but he was the one that continued to carve those bereaved scars indelibly into her heart with every violent move he'd made since.

Those same emotional marks of sorrow were now etched on Tara's palely stoic features looking even more deeply ingrained since he'd found out at the clubhouse from Kozik about how much she truly knew about him now as Jax unassumingly bared, "I feel so far away from you now." Before she could accuse or castigate him further, the outlaw biker quickly added, "I know that's my fault."

Her condemning silence did little to alleviate his anguish as Jax lowly implored, "Just tell me how to get back to you."

The putrid taste of impending rejection hung foully in the air as Tara hesitantly tried to deny him, "I just ... I'm not sure."

"I'm so sorry for all of it," he begged for even a small opening of her understanding. "And I know that I need to fix this somehow. Please, Babe," Jax struck the words between them with the fiery certainty of a lit match. "I'm not going to hurt you this time. Just talk to me."


	4. In My Veins

Tara couldn't rely on a superficial veneer of blank apathy this time.

Nor could she ignore the brooding sincerity of Jax's petition with a mere dose of lethally chilling indifference. Or, use a sharply honed lyrical weapon to chisel away at his relentless pursuit of a hard emotional exchange between them either. Standing resolute as a statue in the waiting stillness of her living room; her former lover wasn't going to be dissuaded this time.

No, he'd sculpted this situation precisely so that this soul destroying confrontation would inevitably happen.

What her brutally persistent biker hadn't foreseen was just how much everything between them had honestly changed. Tara could no longer blindly turn a skilled hand away from the bleeding truth of the man that the boy she had always loved had become or, worse, the illegal carnage he all too willingly surrounded himself with.

It wasn't just unfortunate circumstances that had precipitated their current divide; it was the inevitable consequences of their choices - both his and hers - and neither of them were blameless.

No, they certainly weren't spotless here; they were both more dappled than a granite slab with the shaded veins of their guilt. Maybe, most especially, her because Jax had given her more than fair warning the morning after he'd savagely attacked that shooter outside of Half Sack's funeral services.

However, foolishly, she just hadn't listened.

Not then and, definitely, not when he'd mercilessly tried to end their already troubled alliance by banging that conclusion deep inside of the double penetration diva. At the time, she'd wanted to believe Gemma's justification - that Jax wasn't just using some flimsy excuse to exploit the very real desire he'd had to punish her for Abel's disappearance by thoroughly using the porn queen's body - essentially pushing her away by his only sure means for her own good because her biker couldn't handle the idea of anything else happening to her.

Stupidly, naively even, Tara had relied on the fragile barrier of respectable deniability that she had thought still existed between their two worlds to keep the more dangerous elements that virulently drifted in and out of his life like a cyclone of destruction at bay. Erroneously, she'd deduced that her periphery association with the Sons would somehow allow her to remain untouched despite his turbulent warnings to the contrary.

No, Tara surely hadn't believed him then. Sometimes, she hopelessly wondered in the recriminating dead of the night - if she'd actually followed Gemma's advice about being his constant more faithfully then - whether they could have ridden the terrible situation out to a different conclusion. Ambivalence had kept her from making that commitment until infallibly faced with the barbarous reality that Jax had forewarned about.

And, by then, the deadly siege had become more than her unborn child could possibly withstand.

For that; she was solely to blame.

Regardless of Jax's cautionary words to the contrary or his distancing actions that had given her a lengthy epistle of misgivings about the strength of their supposed connection; she'd been the one that hadn't heeded his prophetic admonitions because Tara hadn't believed him then.

She wholly believed him now.

There was no lingering doubt remaining because the surgeon couldn't help but acknowledge the peril that had left rough blemishes of ridged tissue on her body like a trail of living braille for her fingertips to read as a daily testament to that voracious claim. Nor could she blindly rely on the faithful assurances of her safety readily falling from his lips either. She might have wavered a little in her resolve if Tara could trust that he truly meant the underlying monogamy of his oath but she didn't.

Neither did she discredit the very legitimate determination that Jax couldn't possibly protect her from his outlaw rivals; at least, not every single second of the day. Those were improbable odds at best. Ones that her previously unhedged bet had already made her bleed through when she'd inevitably lost.

Maybe, the arrogant biker within the seemingly humbled man needed to be starkly reminded of the blasphemy inherent in his seemingly unshakable covenant just as plainly as she did.

Painstakingly, Tara began their reeducation, "There's no way that you can make promises about me not getting hurt, Jax."

"I lost my little girl," already feeling the quicksand of grief beginning to suck her down into the abyss of misery that constantly threatened to consume her, Tara forged on, "or my son." Obstinately, she shook off the surge of anguish that tried to put a stranglehold on her next words, "I wear the scars your enemy gave me to serve as a permanent reminder of that all the time."

"Babe, I'm so sorry," gritty remorse palpably oozed from Jax's emotional wounds as he stalked forward to reach for her in desperate consolation, "I know we lost our baby because of me."

Gently, his head bowed in relative shame against hers as his husky timbre whispered the honestly of his pained regret, "I have a feeling that she would have been beautiful and smart just like her mother."

The onslaught of guilt his bittersweet words engendered relentlessly hammered at her already battered heart. Yet, Tara somehow held firm, refusing to retreat from him or the brevity of their situation when he gravely pled, "What do you want me to do? How can I make this better?"

The familiar comfort of his nearness seeped through the small cracks in her normally soul numbing wall of protection and tempted her to weakly succumb to the innate solace readily offered by the tender embrace of her rough hewn man. Swallowing down the the near debilitating need that tried to escape through a shallow crevice in her resolve, Tara rigidly leveled instead, "Nothing. There isn't anything that you can do."

"Salazar won't ever touch you again," Jax feraly hissed that bloodied vow across her forehead in rebuttal right along with a woeful need for her to respond to their longstanding connection in some tactile manner but she wouldn't.

She couldn't.

Tara hadn't needed his verbal surety of retaliatory death to know that Jax had already dispensed a biker's harsh brand of justice. She didn't understand why the Feds were always showing her pictures of Jax's handiwork, whether from his indiscriminate dick or his pounding fists, thinking that would make her waver in her innate loyalty to a man who was buried so deep inside of her that he'd probably always be in her veins no matter how valiantly she tried to get him out.

Yet, even as a highly adept student of anatomy, Tara couldn't fathom the depths of inhumane rage that were necessary for Jax to have somehow managed to pull Salazar's teeth out with his bare fists while they were both in lockup. That level of retaliation hadn't been merely because the disavowed Calavaras member had turned snitch or just to ensure brown protection from the Russians on the inside; Hector's corpse had served as an atrocious display of her man's aggrieved depravity. It had been beyond brutal - garish and obscene - but she really didn't want to think about that dark time or, worse, her own reaction.

Tara was as fine now as she could reasonably hope to be, she silently reminded herself. What had happened to her after seeing those gruesome images didn't much matter now anyways; Abel had become the only thing that was truly important in all of this. That undefiled purpose is what had been sustaining her all of this time. It kept all the damage - the sometimes paralyzing emotional wreckage that still entombed her in those horrifying moments - from derailing her custodial agreement with Gemma entirely.

However, Salazar hadn't just permanently marked her during his attack; he'd savagely cut away any remaining illusions about Jax as well. Whether dead or not, his vengeful blade had already ruthlessly carved out the precious dreams that had once pulsed with life under her skin leaving Tara with nothing but the jagged remnants of disturbing truth marring both her body as well as her mental view of her former sweetheart.

Listlessly, Tara methodically resumed, "Jax, I know what you did to him." Before he could countermand her position, she continued, "And, I already know why." She momentarily paused really needing him to understand that she wasn't just temporarily angry or unfairly condemning his retributory actions, "but all I see are the lies and the violence."

It wasn't something that she even wanted to try and understand anymore as Tara flatly stated, "And, how it's changed you."

Slowly, Tara felt his calloused fingers drag down her body in baffled withdrawal at the unexpected charge. His retreating grasp inadvertently swept away her protective shield of toneless resolve leaving her already bruised emotional flank fully exposed to the blue glare now stabbing at her in accusation along with the break in contact. Suddenly, raw memories threatened to erupt to the surface causing a series of fine tremors to swell in her hands until they nearly overwhelmed her as Tara anxiously surrendered, "Changed me."

Purposefully, the doctor tried to smother the mounting distress that would eventually render her an inert lump of terrified grief if Tara didn't reign herself in soon. Her seeking gaze fastened on the mundane trappings of her father's home to try and steady her roiling feelings. Frantically needing the bland colors and neutral decor to give her a calming sense of detachment once again amid the chaotic jumble of fearful emotions and violent recollections that were trying to ravenously encroach on her control once again.

A small ribbon of verbal relief threaded through the dark tapestry of her reminisces - gracefully pulling Tara back to the present and shuttling that vile oversensitivity under taut threads of reassurance - as Jax's sure voice steadily wove a stable blanket of tranquil ease around her.

"Tara, Babe, listen. I know things need to be different now for both you and Abel," his forthright words expertly soothed. "It was all I kept thinking about while doing my time."

"I learned so much while you were away," she helplessly disclosed not sure how to explain it all to him. How to make him comprehend the physical - never mind the emotional - toll this had all taken on her. And, certainly, not wanting to be the one to bear the onus of revealing anything from Gemma's evergrowing cache of secrets either.

"So did I," his strong admonition interrupted her harried reasoning, "and I know that if things don't change, I'll end up back inside or dead."

One of those options was something Tara couldn't even possibly begin to deal with. Not so soon after his release without it completely derailing her own tentative plans. And the other was something so wrong that the doctor knew that she'd never be able to handle it - no matter the time or distance that separated them - she'd never be able to fake normality again if Jax was really gone forever.

Harshly, she shoved that abhorrent thought aside. Thoroughly unwilling to examine her continued emotional weakness for him despite Tara's natural intellect demanding resilient strength when confronting him. Instead, she covered over her heart's faux pas, "I know who you are Jax but sometimes I look at Abel and I wonder how does this all work for him?"

"How does he grow up in this," Jax bluntly replied.

"Yes," she quietly shivered out her concern for the dangers inherent in her biker's world before courageously forging ahead. "How is he going to be raised in all of this?"

"He's not going to be," Jax implacably responded as he edged closer to her once again.

"What do you mean," she trembled sudden uncertainty against more than just his intimate proximity.

"I realized that you being with me, Tara," he frankly extolled. "It's never been an accident."

"Jax, we're not... together," she swiftly reminded him.

"It might sound crazy but I think you were put in my life to get me out of all of this fifteen years ago," Jax hastily overshadowed her claim with his own blazing conviction, "so now I'm finishing up with SAMCRO while I'm on parole and, then, I'm done."

Each word was a beckoning surety, a solid footing to the promise of a newly constructed future that gleamed brightly with seeming potential as Jax further nailed her with the stunning framework of his plan, "We'll take Abel and go. Start fresh somewhere. Be a real family again."

 _Bastard_.

He never did fight fair with her. How the hell could she possibly reply to _that_?

There really shouldn't even be a choice here.

No matter how deeply she might want to trust in the all too tantalizing fantasy of an idyllic family life away from the outlaw home and hearth of Charming that Jax now ruthlessly taunted her with knowing that her own body wasn't likely to grant her the absolution of her own otherwise; she couldn't allow herself to believe in it.

Or, him.

"I'm not delusional here, Tara," Jax contritely amended at her prolonged lack of response, "I know it's not going to be easy for you to forgive me."

"Jax, even if I could," Tara began resolutely not allowing herself to rely on any of his promises because there were too many brutally valid reasons trying to surf the waves of astonishment now crashing over her like a tsunami until everything else was drowned out leaving behind one elemental truth, "you know that Gemma and Clay are never going to just let you leave especially now."

Now that the biking matriarch had virtually everything to lose as the ailing underdog in a timed cage fight with challenges unknowingly coming at her from all sides. It was almost too much for Tara to take because it all scared her right down to the very marrow of her bones.

"Babe, I need you to believe that I can do this for us," the light of yearning possibility shined down from Jax's face momentarily beguiling her with the brilliance of his guarantee. "Really, Babe, we're going to get through all of this."

And, as she somehow nodded a resigned acquiescence of sorts, _that_ just might be what terrified her the most.

* * *

Relief rushed over Jax like an unrelenting tidal wave forcing his eyes closed in the purest pleasure. The feeling was so clean it was almost excruciating as solace welled within him at her grudging acceptance.

 _Thank God._

Jax had never been stupid but he was damn sure lucky.

The biker had known even as his calloused hands tenderly encased the soft skin of Tara's cheeks that he was a fortunate bastard. The brief caress of his lips over hers - no matter how reluctant on her part - had him feeling like one of the most privileged assholes on the planet because his coffers had instantly filled with an overabundant wealth of consolation and gratitude.

Oh, he fully understood that the chaste kiss hadn't meant that all was suddenly well between them again. That peck had simply been a starting point. One Jax had rightly feared that he might never get.

Yet, graciously, his woman had given him a tentative chance to change the path of their future relationship. The slight opening that he'd been so desperate for all of these months was finally within his grasp and he wasn't going to squander it by wasting the golden opportunity that she'd just honored him with. His was a tenuous reprieve at best but it was _something_ and, really, that's more than the biker knew he deserved.

Then Jax felt her pull away even before Tara's movement put a slight distance between them and he forced himself to meet her look with long suffering patience and even more understanding even though the biker just wanted to yank her back to him and never let go.

Instead, he waited.

Tremulously, her verdant green eyes swept up to his filled with so much uncertainty and confusion that it made him ache all the more for the times when his woman's gaze had only been filled with her unfailing belief in him. Slowly, she hedged, "Jax, this doesn't mean-"

"I know," he reassuringly cut her off before Tara said something to shatter the fragile bridge they'd been erecting back to each other.

He damn sure knew what it didn't mean.

 _Yet._

"I know it'll take some time for you to find your place with me again but whatever happens," Jax wholeheartedly offered his uncanny knack for comprehension amid his resolute promise, "we'll do this together as a family."

Jax took her lingering silence for consent - however hesitant - because he wasn't fool enough to gamble away the boon she'd given him by recklessly pushing Tara for a more definitive response right now. Willingly, he subverted any urge to break the mute truce between them and, instead, basked in the subtle splendor of her nearness.

 _Jesus_.

He'd almost forgotten just how much he needed that, _her_ , the harmony and balance that only Tara could ever gift him with by her mere presence. The quiet solitude floating between them wasn't disconcerting or tense but rather a gentle reminder of golden times past when they were so at ease with each other. This encounter may be fleeting but she was still the only soothing balm he'd ever known.

Greedily, he stood there and let every second with her soak in - pass over his bruised form to seep past the sore muscles - to sink straight into the aching depths of his battered soul. Those were the invisible wounds that truly needed the healing touch that could only come from his woman.

Finally, she broke the tranquil bliss he'd been absorbing with a lightly spoken question. The tone so faint it was almost like Tara was oddly nervous to even vocalize it, "So how do you get out?"

Despite her soft pitch, it wasn't an idle request. Tara was avidly studying him - weighing the merit of his claims against all the damage that he'd wrought - to calculate whether what he was offering would be worth the inherent risk.

Swallowing past a sudden lump of anxiety knowing that he couldn't chance divulging the entirety of his deal with the aging MC leader until things were more solid between them, Jax immediately smoothed his tongue around the truth that he could share, "Clay's hands are going. When he steps down, he loses sway. That's when I get out."

There was a piercing clarity to her stare as Tara obviously waited for more from him as if she already knew that nothing with him or his club could ever be quite that simple.

"Until then, I've got to earn," he offered up the rest with assured confidence hoping that it would be enough to sway her. "Make bank from our deal with the Irish so that I can set myself up with something when my parole is finished and I'm free to go with you and Abel to wherever we decide."

"Jax, I can go anywhere," she replied with a tenor of detachment that was unsettling given the nature of their discussion. "I have options."

 _Shit_.

The knowledge was simultaneously exhilarating and scary as hell. While he'd been cooped up in Stockton, Jax had been terrified that Tara would simply take one of those career alternatives and leave without a word but, now, he was oddly thrilled by her prospects. Not because he'd ever consider living off the fruits of his woman's labor but because of the gateway of possibility that the surgical opportunities now afforded them.

"Providence up in Oregon is interested in me," Tara continued in a way that was mildly perplexing. He couldn't get a read on where the surgeons head was truly at with all of this but he knew that Rougue River would be a solid charter to transfer to if things went that way because they didn't earn their money off the backs of Clay's black market weapons deals.

"That's good," Jax smiled back trying to alley the mysterious vibe he was still getting from his woman.

"You know I've had other offers before this but I didn't want to leave Abel without adequate care until you were released," she lowly admitted while making furtive eye contact only with her father's ugly couch. "I guess that's not really a consideration in my decision anymore but what you're suggesting, Jax, I just... just don't know. Gemma is never going to-"

"You're Abel's mother, Tara. Not Gemma," Jax adamantly interrupted the confused brunette loathing the shaky ground that Tara continually placed herself on in regards to their boy because of his actions.

"Jax," her pale features seemed to blanch even more at his insistence, "have you told her about any of this?"

"Not yet," he replied, baffled by Tara's sudden wariness of his mother given how close they'd become during his time inside.

"Babe, you're place is with Abel. With me," he tried to appease her growing concern. "Gemma knows that."

"I know what Gemma expects from me, Jax," his woman instantly responded with more than a hint of censure in her sharp voice, "but you, _this_ , it scares me."

That made them a fearful pair then because Jax was suddenly petrified that he might still lose her when Tara excused, "I'm going to have to take a minute to think about all of this, Jackson, because I just can't see it."

"I know, Babe," he affirmed, "but you can't avoid what we have either."


	5. Just Breathe

_Sorry for the delay in updating. We've had unseasonably nice weather here and I've spent my free time on a Harley._

* * *

Last night, Tara had once again been troubled by all too plaguing nightmares.

The doctor should have been more used to them by now given their habitual occurrence but, somehow, this new one had caused her more palpitations than even Gemma's unsteady rhythm. The disturbing fantasy had rattled her deep causing tremors of haunting grief to erupt with a snotty mess of hot tears that flowed like molten lava from the depths of her weeping maternal soul.

The sweetness portrayed had been a bitterly sharp blade cutting across her defenses - stealing reserves of numbing strength - leaving her wracked with so many doubts and unfulfilled longings.

It was a cruel slumbering taunt that had kept her mercilessly trapped in the gleaming beauty of all that should have been hers. The midnight hours entwined their sleepy power deep within her psyche to eerily shackle her to the untainted desires of her heart. Turning her grieving need into such chilling images of angelic grace that she hadn't ever wanted to awaken from her drowsy prison.

She'd been obligingly tortured by visions of them all harmoniously standing in the early morning sun like a perfectly formed trio. The richly colored layers of her hair drifting in the breeze like pretty strains of a welcoming ditty as she cradled her second son against her milk swollen bosom. While uptempo giggles from his older brother kept the celebratory beat for their family tune. All of them happily waiting for Daddy to rumble into the Teller-Morrow lot for the long awaited homecoming.

Guilt had chained her to those bleary moments by the sheer necessity of spending just a few more dreamy seconds with her nose nuzzled into her sweet baby's soft cap of hair before wakefulness firmly took hold taunting her with the lingering brush of the downy sensation on her lips.

In the inky darkness, Tara hadn't been able to avoid the unforgiving crash back to reality then anymore than she'd been able to evade Jax yesterday.

It made her slightly ill knowing that she'd been running the hard edge of her new SUV's gas pedal to beat the guys back from Stockton the morning of their release - so that she could report on Nate to Gemma and then get the hell out of Dodge before the outlaw posse triumphantly returned - instead of actually living the familial illusion she'd beheld in her dreams.

Despite her fervent push to avoid emotional entanglements with Jax either time; she hadn't been that fortunate.

However, this morning would be completely different because Gemma had a plan. That woman always seemed to have one risky scheme or another tucked tight into her biker couture ready to be pulled out in a moments notice to handle anything so Tara knew that everything would be fine, eventually, if she could just adhere to the matriarch's better intentions.

And, if it wasn't, well, it didn't _really_ matter because Tara was inured against all things Jackson Teller now no matter the tempting promises he'd made to her last night.

The man had inoculated her himself so it wouldn't be so easy for Jax to hurt her this time. He might try but Tara knew that she was more than immune to his charming bullshit now. Besides, he couldn't break a heart that was already completely shattered - ground into nothing but brittle shards of worthless rubble - the pieces too small to be fused back together and the flesh still too raw to even want to try.

Resigned to her personal damage - knowing it was her penance - Tara knocked on the deeply stained door to the house she'd previously dwelled in. Her knuckles wrapped with the confident belief that no matter what awaited her on the other side; it wouldn't matter. She was only doing any of this for the innocent one that did - for Abel- and, nothing Jax did could really bother her anymore.

That was, until, he opened the door in _nothing_ but a pair of low slung sweatpants and a sleep tussled smile.

 _Asshole_.

The surprised grin that cockily swept across his features facetiously mocked her by highlighting the newly sheared cap of hair that now crowned Jax's head over his more tightly groomed beard. Instantly, it made her want to run her fingers along the shorn strands until the whiskers went from blunt and course to longer and silky at her favorite spot - his chin. Then trail a single, solitary, digit down his well muscled chest until she felt the hard ridges of his new marks courtesy of those bastard Russians just to reassure herself that the scar tissue was really as solid as it appeared.

Instead, Tara cleared the all too inappropriate fugue of desire clogging her brain right along with her throat and minimally offered, "Gemma was supposed to be meeting me."

With a lazy stretch that they both knew showcased his rough hewn physique to more than perfection, Jax leaned along the door to let her pass by as the newly paroled father almost guiltily welcomed, "I'm still trying to figure things out with his schedule."

"Yeah," she plainly replied avoiding the all too familiar male landscape sprawled out tantalizingly in front of her, "I can imagine."

"TaTa," the smaller Teller thankfully distracted her as Abel came barreling out of his back room babbling faster than Jax had probably ridden his Harley since his release, "bad dweam... not here...monsta...TaTa...snugs... TaTa ... no snugs."

Instantly, she squatted down and soothed Abel with a warm motherly coo as her already broken heart hemorrhaged even more, "I know, Baby."

Desperately, Tara fought back the tidal wave of torment that threatened to break over her at the youngster's garbled words. She'd forlornly missed their normal routine of early morning cuddles as well - it had nearly gutted her even though she was old enough to fathom the reasoning behind her absence - her boy only understood the loss. Tenderly, she smoothed back the toddler's unruly golden locks and comforted them both, "But, I'm here now."

She'd always known that Jax's stint in Stockton had only given her a temporary reprieve to her loneliness. A very short term lease into Abel's jubilant little world because this day would surely come. When his father was back. When Tara would slowly be marginalized - relegated to the not so convenient ex - because a reputable guardian was no longer necessary. Surprisingly, it hadn't started the instant Gemma had been given license to roam roughshod over Charming again because the matriarch still needed her. However, the doctor figured her moments with Abel were surely numbered now despite either Teller's flowery claims to the contrary.

Yeah, she'd known it from the beginning. Nevertheless, she'd been just pathetically broken and malleable enough to do whatever Jax had needed of her at the time if only to forestall her own desolation. Still, Tara had always known their was an inevitable landslide of barren pain just waiting to stalk her future.

For all that, Tara had willingly accepted the consequence from the outset. From the instant the surgeon had slowly shuffled out of her own hospital bed to keep Abel from being placed, albeit even temporarily, in the dreaded system for even one night. Or, worse, in Wendy's untenable care.

Yes, Tara had known but, recklessly, just like she'd always loved Jackson Teller; she hadn't cared.

Now, she'd just have to suffer the additional damage of their likely separation as the brunette swore Abel looked like he'd already grown inches since she'd just held him yesterday.

Reluctantly, the normally steady surgeon screwed up her courage and asked what could possibly trigger an overwhelming avalanche of grief stricken debris after their impasse last night, "Is this still okay, Jax. Me being here. With him."

"Yeah, of course, whatever you and Gemma have worked out for the run is all good, Babe," the confused father instantly assured as he effortlessly pulled a faded SAMCRO t-shirt over his head easily covering up the lean torso that had given her such distraction earlier and flooding her with relief. The buffer of emotion coming not so much from the pretty male terrain that was no longer on display but rather from his implicit belief in her place with Abel.

It cost Tara more than he could ever possibly know when she involuntarily trembled out, "Thank you, Jackson."

The quizzical look that washed over her former lover's face broadcast his utter lack of comprehension for her gratitude. He didn't get it. Her biker probably never would because Abel would always be Jax's son regardless of their status so she couldn't possibly explain it to him. Not without opening the veins of her maternal grief and spilling the rest of the forbidden emotions that had become her most sustaining life force since Salazar's attack.

"I still couldn't get him settled last night," Jax stated rather uncomfortably as he absently scratched along his jaw while Abel desperately clutched at her by fisting the edge of her shirt into his chubby little fingers to keep her extra close. "He ended up sleeping in with me again."

She really didn't want to find any common ground with Jax right now. Yet, she couldn't help smiling in sympathetic parental understanding anyway as Tara held the tiny ball of usually perpetual motion she cared for like Abel was her own and expressed, "Sorry, you probably didn't get much sleep then."

It made them a perfectly matched pair in that respect, especially, after the brutally rough night that had lead her straight into the gory details of the early morning news. The local anchors were still reporting about the lack of progress in the murder investigation of the four bodies that had been found out by the new housing development that Hale had pushed through despite SAMCRO's initial protest. Tara was too intelligent to believe in coincidences and it wasn't just uncanny timing that had the coroner abruptly called out to collect the executed Russians upon the conclusion of the Sons' latest stretch. The rather telling facts that had trickled in over the airwaves ever since had given Tara another set of ghoulish nightmares to accompany all of the violence that she'd seen erupt between Jax and Kozik but she valiantly tried to keep her reactions to all of that under control.

Forcing a casual air, she explained her little maternal trick for Abel's sake instead, "You've just got to turn his pillow over so that the good dream side is up."

"Is that really all it will take," Jax prodded with so much more underlying his question. "A quick switch-up and everything is all better."

"Yes," an almost embarrassed smirk sprang across her face before she deadpanned with fortitude, "At least, at his age."

The stagnant air between them changed, quickened, spread out to encompass so much more than the few sparse words they'd barely exchanged this morning and became heavy laden with expectation. The incessant thrum of his intense gaze as Jax soaked in the subtle nuances in her expression - clearly seeking any weakness - made her feel significantly less than impenetrable but Tara refused to meet the weight of his unspoken demand by focusing on the golden cherub still cheerfully ensconced in her loving arms.

Purposefully, Jax grunted out, "Tara, we've still got to finish our conversation sooner or later."

 _No._

No, they didn't. Certainly, not now. Hopefully, not ever.

Adeptly, she evaded even though Tara already knew the answer, "when will you be back?"

"A couple of days," he deliberately replied automatically giving her the out she so obviously was striving for.

"Thank you for staying _here_ with him," his husky morning voice dipped even lower to imply so much more than just the face value of his words as Jax's gaze warmly embraced them. "We've been missing you."

"You really going down for a bike show," she offhandedly quizzed endeavoring to deflect them away from the all too sticky quagmire of emotions his response engendered because she just couldn't handle any more sentimental duress right now.

"You want to know more," Jax hedged in a manner laced with more than a hint of blatant pleasure at her curiosity; yet, rightly teamed with uncertainty at the belief that she was suddenly eager for any illicit details.

She wasn't.

"No," she sighed out with exasperation because she just couldn't absorb any more grueling truth from him right now. "It's too early in whatever this is," she closed her eyes and shook her head in confusion at their awkward arrangement, "for any of that."

"Tara," her biker indignantly began only to be brought up short as Gemma barged through the front door boasting her usual commanding presence without even giving a thought to knocking.

Shakily, Tara exhaled knowing that the matriarch's arrival had graced her with an unexpected reprieve of sorts. Silently, the doctor was about to mentally thank Gemma until her nemesis come mentoring champion lately stopped to take in the seemingly charmed tableau they all made with a speculative expression as the older woman smugly remarked, "Well, isn't this the perfect little family."

"Not yet, " the gruff sexiness of Jax's voice rumbled over Tara making more than just Abel squirm uneasily as her biker huskily promised, "but we will be."

* * *

Gemma had never been _just_ anything; even an Old Lady.

Ever.

So she wasn't about to be relegated to that trite feminine obscurity in her own damn club now either; no matter how harshly her husband may have manhandled her yesterday to prove the contrary. She was still a god damned force of shit kicking nature who'd survived odds far worse despite her family's fatal flaw - allowing her heart to pump with more cunning than even Clay had greed - and she wasn't about to just let that all go.

Deliberately, she dutifully watched her husband's rumbling departure with cautious appraisal after admonishing her men to ride safe. Chucky happily waved the group off from the open garage bays like he was some over zealous and demented greeter from Hellmart. While Piney stood right beside him clearly disgusted. They were a hodgepodge farewell committee to be sure as her Sons embarked on their maiden run for Galindo.

The vote had obviously not gone the way it should have even with Kozik's not so insignificant disclosure about his relapse after the guns were recovered because the junkie had used his nod of approval on the cartel muling to buy back some good faith with his President and, especially, with his previously jealous V.P.

It had been a slippery move on the transfers part but her machinations would always prove more slick.

Resolved to the new course she'd judiciously charted and not willing to let her appointment at St. Thomas veer her away from this opportunity; Gemma watched Piney amble dispiritedly across the concrete lot until the guys pipes were nothing but a distant hum. The resulting lull had her ultimately nodding toward the blonde spilling over the office desk and out of her tight blouse like TM's personally branded centerfold as the matriarch ordered, "Lyla, stick with our fingerless Frenchman."

Gemma didn't need to hear Chucky's adieu or the former porn star sweetly acquiesce to know that her directive would be followed with an exacting desire to please. Especially since the slender blonde never failed to satisfy - whether in front of the camera or in the flesh - and now would be no different.

Gravely, she understood that each step brought her ever closer to her destiny run; an inevitable repeat of dark personal history like the matriarch was continuously stuck riding the same diabolical loop. Crossing the threshold with blatant purpose her heeled boots echoed with brooding reverberation through the almost empty clubhouse. Gemma only stalled briefly at the corner of the bar top knowing that this upcoming chat with the grizzly man who sat on the stool adjacent to the bend was irrevocably going to twist her gnarled ties of allegiance until they eventually broke. However, that couldn't be helped now.

Without censure she dryly remarked, "Having another liquid meal, Old Man."

The ornery member of the First Nine made his gruff displeasure at her intruding presence more than apparent as Piney obstinately poured his favored tequila straight into his ever present mug without comment. Undeterred, Gemma forged ahead, "Don't give me this bullshit. I tried," her hands splayed out to frame her seeming innocence, "this is not on me."

Unexpectedly, Piney's continued silence chafed as his beefy hand steadily raised his stein ignoring her and making Gemma feel even more inconsequential and overly defensive. Suddenly, the matriarch wryly blurted her ad-libbed aspersion, "This is all Clay. He doesn't want to listen to me."

Finally, the heavyset biker conceded a stony recognition as he huffed out between swigs, "nobody missed his side of your rocky conversation out in the lot yesterday."

"Yeah," she scoffed in lingering humiliation as Gemma defeatedly slid onto the seat beside the aged biker like she needed the support. "I guess you're not the only one bumping up against him."

Surreptitiously, she noted the veteran's sullen expression as he tiredly examined the dingy interior of their clubhouse in a rather deflated manner. His downtrodden countenance made it look like the raunchier facets of outlaw life were too hefty a burden for the former Ranger to shoulder now as the biking paraphernalia littering the building made the old man feel like a stranger in his own home. Dejectedly, his shoulders slumped even more when he eyed his best friend's picture once again hanging on the hastily patched wall.

With an all too practiced hand, Gemma intentionally lit a match to set fire to more than just her apparent joint.

Slowly exhaling, the matriarch freely leaned the glowing blunt in his direction knowing that the seasoned biker would be even more receptive to both her weed as well as Gemma's company before too much longer. As the sweet stench wafted around them in a blazing haze of camaraderie from Piney's long hit, she casually offered, "Sometimes I wonder what John would think about all of this."

"He was a complicated guy, Gemma," the rugged old man shook his head derisively as the elder Winston groused, "but we both know this would have been real simple for him."

"True," she cagily agreed before taking another long drag and then letting the smoke easily flow out along with her next words. "Sometimes, I wonder if we'd even be running guns if John was still alive. Although," she harrumphed self-pityingly with a negligent flick of the burning cherry off their shared joint, "he just might have stayed in Ireland with his new family and left us all to rot."

Sharply, Piney gave her a surly look as he grumbled, "Why the sudden walk down ancient history lane?"

"You were J.T.'s best friend," Gemma sagely nodded, "you going to try and tell me you didn't know about Maureen Ashby."

"She was just a distraction," his bluster petered out in the face of her obvious disdain for excuses.

"What about her brother the priest," she craftily countered with a slight scowl. "Why wasn't the good Father as devout _then_ about keeping the Sons out of bed with the Irish?"

"What do you know about Kellan," the wizened original instantly demanded suddenly sobering up to the magnitude of their topic.

"When we were in Ireland," Gemma answered with her disgruntlement the bedrock behind ever single blackened word, "things got dredged up."

"After we got back, I found some old letters that John had written when I was cleaning up at Jax's place. Maureen must have stuffed them in his bag before we left," she morosely sighed. "Mostly hurtful shit as J.T. wooed her pussy but some things," she grimaced in smoggy reflection, "have got me curious."

"You don't just get curious, Gemma," he gravelly challenged. "You tend to get bloody."

"Not always," she grudgingly conceded before craftily impugning with another bleak question. "Did John ever mention that he was trying to end the relationship with the Irish?"

"He talked some about it," Piney dubiously answered. "Why?"

"From what I read, he did more than talk," Gemma raised her brows for somber emphasis, "Father Ashby set up a meeting for him with the Kings but John died before that gathering could take place."

The light of discernment now flooded from Piney's gaze lending his aged body a resilience and strength that it had lacked for far too long as he eagerly waited for her to continue to weave her captivating tale of long dead secrets. Pulling another grim string in the loom of the Reaper's fate, she smoothly flattened the lingering threads of doubt, "Piney, did John ever tell you he thought that Clay had sent him into a Mayan ambush?"

* * *

Gemma knew that lilies weren't the only things that she found tricky to nurture sometimes.

Unlike Piney's impending wrath; her interactions with Tara always required a more subtle finesse if the good doctor was truly going to bloom into her future daughter-in-law. The intuitive brunette still had a lot of expertise to acquire if she was going to grow to fulfill her potential as Jax's eventual queen but the younger woman was certainly getting there. Tara not only loved her man; the surgeon had been dutifully learning to love the club as she'd cared for Abel. And, though she hadn't completely reconciled with Jax yet – unlike her lilies – Tara had _never_ gotten too much of her son.

Gemma was confident in her boy's prowess in _that_ respect; just as the biking maven was determined that she could wait out the ticking clock on Charming Heights and reverse the imminent domain vote by saving the community gardens.

Her dead mariposa bulbs had sent her into Rita's floral shop for one purpose and had her leaving with another because Gemma was going to save the green sanctuary where Nate had initially cultivated her life-long love of flowers. She just had to garner the right sway with Tara to get the younger woman to agree to be a Gold Circle Member so the committee could attract the right kind of donors.

Wearily, Gemma stood in the hospital corridor outside of the surgeon's office as the brunette cavalierly refused her request, "I can't. I'm already on three committees here. Besides what do you care about an overgrown park?"

"Nate taught me to plant seed in that overgrown park. I am not going to let them gut it and put up a god damn store in its place," she heaved out. "I need something to stay the way its supposed to after," she gasped for breath as her futile anger spiked yet another set of dizzying palpitations.

"Okay, Gemma, I get it," Tara immediately soothed as she leant a steadying hand. " I'll help somehow but you need to sit for a minute."

"They just need your name," the matriarch barely sputtered out as the surgeon slowly led her along until she was settled onto the couch in Tara's office.

"Then we're going to make a deal here, Gemma," Tara genuinely conceded. "I'll do this for you but you've got to lay off the pot."

Before Gemma could gather the necessary air to even object, Tara affectionately chided, "I'm a doctor and I can smell it on you. If you're not going to tell Clay or Jax what's going on with you. How could you possibly explain away a hospital stay?"

Grudgingly, she conceded to the younger woman's requirement with a sardonic, "Thanks, _Mom_."

Frustrated and obviously concerned, Tara rejoined, "I know you have another appointment today, Gemma. Please, you know it's best."

Finally, the reigning queen nodded; deigning to make this annoying sacrifice if only to keep their quasi-maternal bond perennially blooming.

* * *

Tara felt like a complete fraud - as if a fool had somehow taken her place - while thanking the administrator for her gracious help in preparing all the necessary paperwork to accompany the professional feelers that Margaret had already sent out to other hospitals on her behalf. It was a fabulous coop to have so many surgical units so readily interested in her skills. Logically, her brain told her to jump as far away from all things Charming as quickly as she could manage but her heart hauntingly thumped to the beat of a completely discordant tune.

Easily, she set the packet of opportunities that had been left on her desk aside to curtail any further discussion in favor of prepping for her upcoming surgery. That pipe dream was short lived when the red haired officiant readily surveyed her lack of exuberance and intentionally reminded, "Two months ago you broke down in my office because you needed to get out."

"I know," Tara fully disclosed her ambivalence, "I still feel that way but that was before things with Gemma."

"Do Jax and Gemma both know that you're planning to move," Margaret queried with more persistence than compassion.

"I'm not just yet, I need to be here," the surgeon conceded her justification. "Abel still needs me. Gemma too."

"Just be careful, Tara," Margaret cautioned with wholly merited concern, "longer for Abel can very easily turn into forever because that little boy is always going to need you." Almost desperately her friend pled, "Please think about this."

"It's the only thing that I think about," she vehemently rebutted. Miserable with the burgeoning knowledge that she would never really have been able to forsake her commitment to the child of her heart especially now.

"By the way," the older woman informed, "Gemma was here looking for you again after her appointment."

"Did she see any of this," Tara immediately grasped a worried hand around the stack of documents.

"I don't think so," Margaret apprised empathetically, "but your instinctual fear of what that woman knows should really tell you something, Tara."

As her colleague left, the brunette tried to bury the dossier of incriminating prospects deep in her desk drawer wishing that she could do the same with her ever present body of fear.

* * *

The swift ride down had been a rejuvenating blur for his soul.

The amazing rush as Jax became part of the road - as the Thunderheaders drowned out all the lingering doubts and misgivings that had been screaming in his head – leaving just the things that pumped happiness through his heart to vibrate right along with his bike's engine. Easily funneling everything down to the only thing that was remaining in his field of vision.

 _His future_.

He only wanted to see a beautiful life with Tara and Abel because they were what a man should hold on to when he'd been broken.

 _His family_.

And, whatever else he and Tara might yet salvage from the undeniable bond that would always remain between them. It would take time and a lot of effort so that they could find their balance on a new ride that was truly worth living. Yet, it would certainly merit his effort because Jax didn't want his son to have to struggle to find things that brought him joy.

Or, worse, have to carefully navigate his way back to them.

Not like him.

The old saying about the 'things that don't kill you, make you stronger' was an utter crock. The things that hadn't killed Tara only made both of them angry and sad. Bitter even. So, rightfully, he wanted Abel to have so much more than the suffering and pain that had been Jax's inherent legacy as the heir apparent of the Redwood Originals.

The treasury of brotherhood within his club had become corrupt long before he'd ascended to their felonious ranks. His father had known that the Sons would eventually become a repository of men just waiting to be busted up physically or, worse, crippled emotionally by the rigorous demands of outlaw life until their moral compass was skewed so far past callous they were nothing but barbarous cold-blooded animals.

After the dangers had made each of them forfeit that which was their most precious bounty in this world because the Reaper always collected his due from their members eventually. For him, it had been the innocence of unborn life – a priceless birthright – cavalierly stolen by the sharp blade of retribution. For his brothers, they'd each endured the untold destruction virtually required of the one percenter path at some point. And, now that bloody tally had ridden them straight into a barren territory, a no man's land of mercenary desolation, that left all of them treacherously without sure footing.

Especially, him.

This was not comfortable knowledge. Quite the contrary. The biker knew that he was going to have to walk a very fine line to get his woman to believe in him again - yet watching Clay's greed and avarice slant the leader's understanding of how indistinct the lines were between muling and dealing – Jax felt like he'd already faltered.

SAMTAZ certainly hadn't taken their direction from Redwood given the timing of their long past meth vote but other charters would surely see the tacit nod of approval that Mother had ostensibly just given to all of them regardless. If Clay couldn't comprehend _that_ truth then their President was definitely losing his grip in more than just the most obvious way.

And, no shot of cortisone was going to fix their clutch on this shady business or lessen that painful friction point of reality.

Neither were his father's ramblings.

Whether they be the angry manifesto revival or the M.C. love letter slant, the insights that J.T. had relentlessly pounded out from his Harley riding pulpit were certainly not an easily atoned come to Jesus nor a step by step instruction manual for dummies. That pulpy type of generic panacea would at least outline a solution of some sorts. His father's writings certainly didn't. They just offered up more problems for him to ponder.

Unfortunately, Jax hadn't figured out a resolution to his own chapter's dilemmas as of yet but Reggie's repossessed patch might just allow him to offer more than Clay's less than humble demand to remedy the Tucson predicament. If he could just piece this all together alone while the others got their dicks wet, Jax was that much closer to ensuring that the Originals' short term profit strategy didn't become the entire M.C.'s new business model. If the charters all thought they could do their own cooking and dealing, they wouldn't have to worry about any Feds or Leos catching them with a life sentence of cargo - whatever good was left in the Sons - it would already have been crushed under the weight of the crank. He couldn't just cash out if SAMCRO's brief relationship with Galindo took them all down.

Jax needed to be able to walk away cleanly from his club and toward the beautiful life he wanted with Tara and Abel.

* * *

Tara hadn't had this draining a shift in a very long time.

It wasn't just the delicate operations that she'd performed on tiny little organs; it was the discreet maneuvering that she'd had to externally facilitate to handle both Gemma and Margaret.

Subterfuge was not a skill the surgeon employed often but both of those older female figures were strongly opinionated and thoroughly convinced that they knew exactly where Tara really belonged. Unfortunately, that was a conundrum that only she could resolve.

And, Tara would have to eventually but only on her own timetable – not anyone else's.

Until then, she needed to avoid circumstances like today. Where the turbulent waves that each woman could so easily produce within her - with nothing but a chastising phrase or faintly disappointed look - made her spin and tumble internally like a small pebble swirling in the vast ocean.

She loathed her emotional insecurity.

The vulnerability and weakness that lurked just under the surface of her skin all too ready to sink her - drown her in grief, uncertainty, and regret – only to let her rise momentarily to face the unrelenting fear that swelled all around her before dragging her down again.

It was exhausting.

A ridiculous form of mental torture that was only appeased by the one shiningly pure aspect of her life…Abel.

As Tara put aside the children's book that she'd just finished reading to him even though the little angel had fallen asleep within the first few pages, she couldn't help leaning forward to place a reassuring kiss over the rumpled blonde locks crowning his head that was so much like his father's. Sometimes, the surgeon was still amazed that she'd been the one to help repair Abel's prematurely flawed heart when, now, the toddler was the only thing that soothed the ache in hers.

Quietly, she picked up the toy motorcycles from his floor and put them on his dresser simply contented by the steady rhythm of his breathing. Wisely, she soaked up the peace of these small moments like they were a maternal force that somehow reignited the elusive spark that still kindled in the charred remnants of her soul.

Finally, slightly revived, Tara quietly crept out his door only to stall at the opening of the master across the hall. She really didn't want to look but, nevertheless, she was drawn to what had been.

Her glance immediately brushed over the bed that she'd once shared so happily with Jax. Now, it was pristinely made, almost sterile and unwelcoming, amid a room that barely looked like it had even been used after Gemma's thorough cleaning binge.

The room was a lifeless parcel within the home; a blatant reminder that something would forever be missing from their family no matter how they might try to clean that knowledge up or put pretty coverlets over it.

As Tara turned away and opened the door to enter the small confining box she'd slept in while Jax had been incarcerated an unexpected pain lanced through her. Shakily, she bent to retrieve a discarded pair of his socks along with his jeans from the floor before sinking unsteadily onto her narrow pallet.

Hugging his cast-off garments as she leaned back against the mattress, she was overwhelmed with a surge of long banked need because the sheets still smelled of him.

 _Them_.

Tara knew that she should change them - strip the dirty longings of her wary heart away right along with the soiled cotton - but she couldn't.

Tonight, she wasn't nearly strong enough to push down her yearnings but after some rest she'd surely awake from another nightmare in the morning once again resolved. So even if it was just for this evening, nobody but her would ever know. Shamelessly, she burrowed down into the fragrance laden fabrics breathing in his swathing comfort because the only thing she really needed right now was to feel closer to Jax.


	6. The Wolves

Her morning had dawned with a renewed sense of purpose.

At least, that's what Tara kept meticulously repeating to herself with each step she took down the hospital corridor to cooly bolster the steely resolve of her flagging backbone. For each millisecond that she'd spent cloistered inside of Jax's house with Abel again had seemed to quickly burn away another degree of her mettle. Scorching her with the knowledge that in a vintage era gilded only by her cherished memories - before all the vicious carnage that had forever tarnished her body and ripped them apart over these past grueling months – that there'd been a time when her biker's place had once been a preciously molded sanctity.

A home.

Theirs.

 _Hers_.

A humble little safe haven built upon Jax stalwartly teaching her how to more deeply trust in him, in _them_ , through his bloodstained honesty. A place so steeped in his virile reality - of the oft nitty gritty violence of her biker's life which physically took him away from the homey normality within those walls - that they couldn't help but to work _together_ on a daily basis to shelter and care for Abel. Their time spent reunited as a couple hadn't been contented in the traditional sense but it had been strewn with arresting moments of profound domestic harmony. Strung with an intimate peace that was so satiating to her orphaned soul that it had held its own manner of kindred beauty. A loving grace that had melded them even closer as they'd become a seemingly inseparable family unit.

It was a series of warm memories that taunted her. Mocked her. Made Tara wish that she could so easily melt right back into all of that shimmering Teller promise – lapse back into the solid chapter of their lives before she'd so quickly lost faith in the arms of Jax's love – to that blessed period when she had so readily pulled both of her precious boys ever closer.

Instead, after Abel had toddled in during those wee hours, she had lovingly cocooned their truncated family into a metamorphic snuggle fest. Where their fluttering hearts spread out to calm each other like delicately patterned wings to form a paired connection - a resplendent display of maternal bliss and nurturing solidarity - amid the background of the soft cotton sheets as mother and son had gracefully returned to slumber spooned within her protective embrace.

Then, instead of her unwanted penchant for plaguing nightmares, the surgeon had awoken to the nagging belief that her sleep had only provided a temporary shield from the knowledge that Jax was, once again, offering her that same forthright exchange in their relationship. A brutal integrity that threatened to combat all of her rightful fears with the lure of their safe familial future anywhere she wanted besides the Charming local they currently resided.

The idyllic ruse had been a hard fallacy to shake especially after she and Abel had gone through the endearing antics of their normal morning routine. Singing that silly little nursery rhyme so that her boy could happily find his head, shoulders, knees and toes as they threaded his limbs through his clothes. Or, chirping through her modified game of _I Spy_ so that Abel would more readily recognize his colors as she pointed out all the things that were red on their way to St. Thomas like the fire hydrant or the octagonal stop sign at the corner of their street.

That false notion of safe tranquility - of unified family joy - had even dogged Tara through her first procedure of the morning. Unwittingly distracting her, making her normally steady hands sweat with an anxious longing for so much more than her fearful and tattered heart could even begin to believe in again.

And, yet, Tara had to be honest with herself even if she couldn't be with anybody else.

She wanted it.

Them.

Abel.

And, God help her… _Jax_.

It was a silent admission that Tara couldn't have faced if looking at herself in the mirror. The clarity of self-disgust gleaming back at the brunette because of her innate weakness where her biker was concerned would compel her to chastise, to call herself out, to levy an all too accurate judgement upon her own pale shoulders.

 _Stupid bitch._

Kohn had been utterly right about one thing; she was pathetic.

It was a haunting truth that had Tara rushing to the refuge of her office to reestablish her detached control only to be brought up short by the grizzled veteran sitting unexpectedly on her couch. His gentle snores so at odds with his gruff demeanor and aged physique as she uncertainly clicked the door closed behind them, encasing them both within the solitude and privacy the hospital walls blandly offered.

Cautiously, Tara approached the napping original clutching his oxygen tank like a child's security blanket and softly greeted him with a gentle shake on his shoulder, "Piney."

Her lulling cadence accompanied her friendly inquiry, "You okay?"

Startled, clearly jostled by his unplanned snooze, Piney tried to regain his equilibrium and his bearings as he excused, "Yeah, I just…Sorry, I… I just let myself in."

"It's okay," she immediately reassured actually thankful for a diversion, medical or not, from her ruminating thoughts as she pulled up a chair across from him. "What's going on?"

"Uh," the old man hesitantly started, "you remember those questions you were asking about John Teller a few months back. Said that you read something."

"Yeah," Tara responded uneasily as she pulled back flush against the seat wantonly increasing the buffer zone between them. She felt almost blindsided by the route this conversation was abruptly headed after thinking that the matter between them was something to do with his ailing health and not their previously curtailed discussion.

"Well," the geriatric motorcycle enthusiast impatiently demanded, "what was it?"

"You shut me down," the surgeon furtively reminded him. "Why do you want to know now?"

"Club is heading into troubled waters," the old man hedged with the negligible shake of his hand, "and, maybe, whatever you read could help me keep things from rocking too much."

"What's really going on, Piney," she boldly asked trying to swerve around the hazardous history that the elder Winston had unwittingly dredged up. Yet, certain that, somehow, the older man's vague metaphors were going to land a direct hit, regardless of her verbal maneuvers, and completely obliterate any sense of serenity she'd managed to achieve in the last few months with his reasoning.

"Just reminiscing about things past in my golden years," Piney offered a self-denigrating load of crap. "John was my friend and I miss him," the aged biker continued with determination. "I want to read whatever it is. I have a right."

 _Bullshit_.

"Why," she carefully stalled.

"I can't tell you," he denied with blatant agitation at her tactic, "but I need some god damn leverage."

"For what," she nervously exhaled not liking the tenor of this subterfuge at all.

"Just need to verify some information that was recently given to me," the elder Winston tried to bluff his way around the inherent danger in their conversation with a falsely congenial smile that resembled more of a grimace. "Thought maybe some more of John's history might help."

Guardedly, Tara detoured around the unspoken truth hanging out in her mind like an inescapable road block that would make everything in their world crash to a deadly halt and divulged instead, "Jax had given me a manuscript that his father had written. Wanted me to read it. With things the way they were between us, I went to you with my questions because I didn't want to upset Gemma."

"That it," Piney blustered in obvious disappointment because she knew that at one time he'd been familiar with the contents of his patched brother's lengthy thoughts in that document.

"Uh, why," she desperately tried to assess the blunt man's sudden motivation for foraging into the past after virtually washing his hands of John's manuscript when he'd given his copy to Jax.

"Just some dead history, Sweetheart," he obliquely stated.

"Then I really can't help you," she stonily replied back not willing to budge from her relatively safe position of ignorance.

The silence of their tense standoff was finally interrupted by the red flame atop Margaret's head as she popped open the door and urgently called out, "Emergency gastroschisis. Girl. Ten minutes old."

Immediately, Tara reacted. Her body automatically vacating her crouched defensive position in her chair as she rapidly questioned, "has Dr. Namid already been paged?"

"He's on his way," Margaret competently confirmed with a wry expression toward her guest. "You should really scrub in."

"Sorry, if I was being too hard on you, Doc," Piney ambled up from her couch with his grumbled apology as she hastily made for the open doorway. "You've got more important shit to do like saving babies."

"Piney," she swiftly called back to his retreating form as he shuffled in the opposite direction down the corridor. "When you're ready to tell me what's really going on," she valiantly tried to convey the inherent concern attached to her underlying meaning after the aged biker swiveled his silvered head around to make uncompromising eye contact with her. "We can finish this conversation."

Noting the pinched understanding finally dawn across his quizzical features, Tara rushed off to repair damage that she was highly adept at handling instead of the defect in the heart of the Sons that she truly feared might forever be beyond her scope of expertise.

* * *

It wasn't his club but Jax had certainly made SAMTAZ revote their call.

Unfortunately, the only satisfaction he'd gotten was watching them dump Huff and Benny at his feet like so much bloody refuse ignobly left on the side of the highway instead of actually cleaning up their shady business at the truck stop. It was galling that all of his solo sleuthing had only resulted in aggrandized Mexizona balls instead of the satisfaction of that charter's release from this clusterfuck of illegal manufacture and distribution.

He didn't need to look at Bobby milling behind him in the darkness to know that the wily haired patch would still be disgustedly muttering about every business needing both shipping and receiving not to mention customers. That was a given.

It just didn't need to be the Sons of Anarchy's certainty.

And, yet, he'd failed to secure SAMTAZ's face saving exit strategy despite unveiling their bogus crank vote after Reggie's adulterous disclosure. Armando could be as hang dogged apologetic as he wanted but it didn't change the fact that the President's guys had gotten a little too greedy with their taste of the cooking money in just a few short months.

There was a cautionary lesson to be learned from this sordid tale and it wasn't just about his club's future. It was about himself.

In less than two years, Jax had gone from validly considering if his club should get out of the black market weapons business altogether and go more legit after the Mayans had destroyed their warehouse to mercenarily entrenching them even deeper into the decrepit underbelly of the illegal world with this stop gap cartel deal. At this rate, would their even be a thermometer capable of gauging his ever dipping moral temperature when this was all said and done?

It was a self-diagnosis that the biker wasn't comfortable with at all.

Knowing that the thrill of blowing up the barrels of a grease truck as they'd all raced down Vesper trail had only alleviated them from the physical presence of a legal tail and not the second guessing scrutiny he was suddenly placing upon his own actions and motivations. As a convicted felon on Federal release, Jax needed to carefully monitor his surroundings so that he didn't find himself back on the other side of the penitentiary fence.

Yet, it wasn't his precarious legal position that daunted the Sons' heir as they stood in the lowly lit meeting place for the exchange. The repair lot mottled with various types of farm equipment was fortified with enough heavy fire power that Romeo's contingent of men looked more like an elite army than just the enforcement arm of the Galindo cartel. It was just another link in the chain of burgeoning knowledge that Jax had likely chosen incorrectly for his club but, mostly, his vote had cast a maiming blow to his own conscience.

Why the hell had he _really_ agreed to any of this? Had he really thought that he could just hoard the bounty from muling to escape with Tara and Abel and not have the consequences of that fithly decision not affect him? Or, worse, had his ego been more than mildly boosted knowing that such serious players as Romeo thought Mr. Crow was capable of handling a leg of such badass trade?

That was an insidiously troubling question that Jax would have to honestly examine for himself at some point on the ride but, right now, he and the other Redwood's needed to take care of business by hauling Galindo's blow safely back to Charming so that he could get home to Tara and his boy.

* * *

Not so patiently, Gemma waited for her future successor.

As far as she was concerned, the crafty little surgeon had a lot of explaining to do even though that meddling red head had caught her rifling through the good doctor's desk earlier and would likely tattle on the biking maven at the first opportunity.

Fortunately, Tara had been in an OR bay at the time or she was certain that Margaret would have already squealed like a stuffed pig. So she'd taken the chance to visit with her grandson down in the hospital daycare while she killed time until her pretty little protégé was available again. The opportunity had been a good dose of rejuvenating medicine for her ailing heart even if the answers to Gemma's suspicions hadn't just fallen out of Abel's coloring book like manna from motorcycle heaven.

But, now, she was permanently camped out on Tara's benign couch which lacked as much color as it did personality just waiting to pounce as the door knob turned to finally reveal her quarry.

Startled by her presence, the younger brunette squeaked out a pale greeting before Gemma falsely excused, "Sorry to barge in. You in the middle of something?"

"No. Just finished an emergency surgery," Tara's wanness seemed to fade away as she smiled a jittery welcome and shrugged as if she placed a heavy burden down along with her files on the desk. "It's just the paperwork on those is always exhausting."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Gemma commiserated before slyly adding. "I came by earlier."

"Margaret mentioned that," Tara didn't even raise her brow in inquiry.

"Yeah, I'm sure she did," the matriarch scoffed at the administrator's dull predictability. Red's bottle enhanced image was only capped by Margaret's perfunctory belief that it was somehow her divine responsibility to pull Tara away from all things biker related in a futile bid to save the surgeon from her own folly.

And, ever since her private words with the hospital official had led to a hostile environment claim that was subsequently dropped; the two women had been actively engaged in a not so subtle battle for superiority where Tara was concerned. They were both determined to be the voice of feminine wisdom and guidance that the younger woman followed unfailingly without question.

And, so far, Gemma had been the reigning victor in their clash of wills but it seemed that the self-righteous interloper might be gaining an edge recently. A weakening of her position was something that the biking queen simply couldn't tolerate right now; not along with the decline in her own personal health.

Ignoring the frustration and censure that was so clearly evident in Tara's now roiling gaze at her continued snipes at the surgeon's boss; Gemma reversed the sweeping tides of disapproval back on her future daughter in law. With a poignant tone, she questioned, "How are things going with you and Jax?"

Sighing at the obvious jibe, Tara asked, "Why do you want to know?"

 _Christ_.

Surely, the clever little physician wasn't so drained after her impromptu procedure that Tara had forgotten just who and what she was _really_ dealing with here as Gemma pointedly reminded with the sharp tilt of her chin, "You've always known that serious responsibilities come with my boys."

Weary, not to mention obviously wary, Tara anxiously replied, "Gemma, you promised not to pressure me about all of this because-"

"Uh, uh, Doc," she swiftly interrupted not letting the younger woman off the hook this time, "I only gave my word not to make you talk about what happened with Salazar _not_ what's going on between you and my son."

As she watched in the terse silence, Tara's delicate features slowly became painted in muted shades of resignation as the younger woman reluctantly conceded, "I know that you're probably aware that we've talked some."

There was something indefinable concealed in the deeper flecks of the doctor's gaze that made Gemma demand, "You trying to hide something from me?"

"Why would I do that," Tara immediately shot back in a tone rife with nerves.

"The same reason you're trying to answer my question with a question," she sagely deduced. With a smirking grimace Gemma finally held up the cover memo she'd unearthed from Tara's desk that summarized the surgeon's potential offers from hospitals so far out of SAMCRO's reach they were in another jurisdiction as she leveled, "This isn't good for anybody."

Shocked, keenly agitated at being caught unawares just as Gemma had been when she'd first spied the incriminating piece of paper, Tara stared at her with wide, fearful eyes before admitting, "Gemma, that was all initiated before we knew about your condition."

The matriarch had figured as much but it was still a painful confirmation.

Gemma had known that her overly neurotic future daughter-in-law had had other offers from hospitals and private practices all too keen on stealing the good doctor away from St. Thomas, not to mention her family, during Jax's bid. Margaret had lamented every time Tara had demurred away from their attempts in favor of caring for Abel but it was the family flaw that had truly made Gemma realize that her former nemesis didn't belong anywhere but Charming with her boys. Always had.

It had just taken facing her impending demise square in the eye to make a woman so set in her lethally grudging ways to readjust Gemma's perspective. Facing that bitch, mortality, could really humble a person. Even her.

But it wouldn't make her roll over and play dead a second before Gemma had to finally submit to those rabid jaws as she proclaimed, "I don't know where this is all leads, how we handle this, but what I do know is that if you take any of these offers it will be very bad for our family."

"You already sound like you know all the answers, Gemma," Tara hedged.

"No, I don't," Gemma frankly replied. "What I do know is that you leaving would be very painful for my son, for Abel," her voice broke, "and even for me."

"Gemma," the younger brunette instinctively reached out in comfort. "You know I'm not going anywhere right now."

"Jax and Abel are going to need you, Sweetheart. You understand me," Gemma forcefully prodded until she was sure that Tara finally seemed to accept her rightful place.

It was here; in Charming, with their family.

Gemma was damn sure going to make certain that things stayed that way after working so hard to groom and keep Tara close all of this time. Since she was finally unable to deny that it was what Jax had needed so desperately for years; Gemma couldn't help noticing that it was also want the woman before her wanted as well. There was no way that Tara could hide the naked longing that fought like a ravenous wolf to reclaim dominance over the younger woman's fear every time her boy's name was mentioned. And, even if it was with the last gasp of shaky breath she ever took; the matriarch would somehow ensure that the doctor reconciled with her boy.

The brunette was clearly fighting a battle with herself and _that_ Gemma knew was always a losing proposition. Otherwise, the biking matriarch wouldn't be facing her own vanquishment when her heart beat out its final punch.

* * *

The ride back from Arizona hadn't been physically arduous but, mentally, it had just about killed him.

Jax knew that his conscience was now stretched across a torturous rack with vices constantly twisting tighter from both sides - pulling the fraying ropes of his responsibilities ever deeper so that the tiny fibers sliced like serrated blades - to eventually gouge out bloody pieces of his lacerated soul.

The last thing he wanted to do was sacrifice any more of himself on the alter of SAMCRO's anarchy but his innate loyalty wouldn't let him just ignore the damage already being wrought on his club by this deal nor could he forget the reason he'd initially agreed to this in the first place - Tara and Abel – his family.

Jax was generously reminded of them as he opened his front door and their easy giggles floated through the gap like a warm summer breeze; the happy tones brushing over him with a soothing contentment that thoroughly appeased more than just his aching backside after the long run. Especially when the brunette that had mercilessly held his heart in her hands since he was nothing but a rutting teen couldn't hold back her beautifully relieved pleasure at his smiling return.

It was a fleeting moment of unbridled connection between them before Abel drew his attention with his exuberant cry of welcome, "Daddy."

By the time he'd moved forward dodging the toys spread out between Tara and Abel to look at his woman again, she'd willfully squirreled her feelings away like they were a scarce commodity of fall nuts being hidden away for a long winter's freeze.

Her stifled reaction chafed a bit but he wouldn't let Tara pop the bubble of his sudden elation. She was here, in his home, with their son upon his return so unlike the forlorn morning Jax had been released from Stockton and all he could do was grin because her presence made all the difference in the world.

Naturally, the father leaned down and left a paternal peck atop his son's tow head as he easily admitted to them both, "I missed you guys."

Without thought, he swept over and pressed a lingering kiss on Tara's surprised cheek as he deeply affirmed, "Missed you too, Mama."

He'd had Abel's rapt attention as Jax had addressed his 'TaTa' as a mother - more specifically his boy's - and the blonde toddler proved that he was as quick on the uptake as his father with seemingly no residual defects from being narced up at birth when Abel hopefully crowed in echo, "Mama."

There was a moment of sheer panic that erupted across his woman's shocked features - a desperate need to pop up from her seated position on the floor and run from the nomenclature – before slowly surrendering to the shift as Abel quickly threw his arms around them both before scampering back to his cars and puzzles.

As Jax rose up from his crouched position, Tara uneasily stood trying to absorb the understated magnitude of the moment that had just passed. Before she could even attempt to evade the raw emotions that whipped around just under her surface by escaping his presence or lashing out in anger, Jax informed, "Brought you a souvenir."

"Wow. From the motorcycle show," the sharp edge of her temper slipped through as Tara sarcastically jabbed. "I can't wait."

When Jax pulled the thick stacks of bills out of his rucksack, Tara's derision quickly faded to awed trepidation with a leery, "Wow."

Jax planted himself against the dining area table as she drew near shamelessly enjoying the riptide of pride that his woman's reaction elicited when he placed a large bundle of cash in each of her capable hands. It might be dirty but this was his justification for this entire Galindo mess as he granted, "There's going to be lots more. I want you to put it in a safety deposit box in your name."

"Jax, no," she automatically shied away from his request and, most likely, all of the underlying implications that went along with honoring his take.

"Tara," he firmly argued back needing her to accept his offering and finally understand, "the rest will go into the box too so that we can leave. This is real just like I promised."

When his empty arms snaked around her, his woman filled them with so much more than just her cherished form and the lumps of hard cash pressed between them when she let him effortlessly pull her near. Her touch settled upon his limbs and squeezed so much joy into that tentative embrace even before her eyes landed on his with a beguiling stillness that he recognized as her silent concession.

His voice rough with the strains of his relief, Jax assured, "Talk to my mom, she knows the drill."

"Okay," Tara faintly offered almost paralyzed by the grandiose nature of just what she'd somehow given her tacit agreement to and, though he'd have liked to basque in her acquiescence, Jax wasn't a fool.

All too readily, he repeated her confirmation back to her. Then Jax confidently strode away to let Tara assimilate and process all of the connotations of their latest progress inside that supercharged mind of hers that never stopped churning. The one truly good thing that had come from Jax's introspective trek home from Tucson was the realization that his behaving relatively normal with his woman acted like a gravitational pull, keeping her in his orbit, and more closely aligned to where Tara was meant to be. With him. Always.

When Jax heard her deep sigh it shivered a tepid warning up his departing back. So the biker figured it just might take a lot longer than his shower to run cold for her to deplete the steam of worry arising from these most recent changes.


End file.
